Hour Two
by SaraER
Summary: What happens after the bomb goes off?
1. Chapter 1

HOUR TWO

_You're with me, you're safe._

_I like it when life is like that… heightened somehow._

_I don't want you to feel used._

_You're talking in the past tense._

_I want you to leave your wife and children and be with me._

_Alone at last._

_It doesn't always work out the way we want._

_I think it's a way out for both of us._

_If only the circumstances had been wildly different._

_I also love…_

Every word, every thought, every moment she had ever spent with him was racing through her mind, like a manic jumble of letters and phrases that didn't make any sense.

She drove in silence. She turned the heat off in the car. It was really cold. And it was dark, save for the glow of the car's headlights ahead of her. There was no one else on this road. She felt more alone than ever.

"I also love…"

Why hadn't she said it? Just right then and there, said it? What had she been waiting for? Was the calm and stillness of the moment, of the fire lighting up their bodies, of the red wine blurring the lines between sane and crazy not enough?

"Careful," he had said. And she had been careful when her instinct had told her to be reckless. _My life_, she thought. A constant battle between patience and haste, caution and reckless abandon.

Here she was again, driving back to Washington, back to Saul from that fire road, from Brody, who was by now deep into the dense Canadian woods enveloping the border.

She had chosen caution, she had done the sensible thing, the sane thing. And she was alone.

But why didn't she just say it? Would anything have been different if she had?

Then that thought led her swirling mind down an entirely different rabbit hole.

_I missed something before._

She had missed something again. Something sinister. "Bullshit," she called out when he told her he was prepared to die. She could not understand his willingness to die in order to kill.

Every little thing, every little detail of the past thirty days was calling out to her, and the din was so loud, so unbearable.

The sun was beginning to rise, and with it taking away the cold the darkness had brought. This made her feel less alone, less stranded.

She kept driving. Eventually she became so sick of the silence that she turned on the radio. It was impossible to find a station that wasn't broadcasting the news of the attack. She felt transported back eleven years, back to that day, when those towers crumbled and with them something inside her, too.

She settled on the local NPR affiliate, which was delivering uninterrupted reports from Washington, but she turned down the volume just so all she could hear were whispers, and she felt less alone, stimulated even.

"Because you gave it up to me," he had whispered to her. If she concentrated hard enough she could hear his voice amid the cackle of talk.


	2. Chapter 2

HOUR TWENTY-FIVE

Carrie calculated that it had now been just over 24 hours since she last saw Brody. Since she last felt his hair, kissed his lips, grasped onto him so hard that she felt she might fall over if she ever let go. But he had backed away and then walked away. He had said goodbye, and she had watched him walk away, fading into the blackness.

"So." Saul interrupted her wandering thoughts. They were sitting in an underground conference room at Langley. It was 2:30 AM and Saul had sent everyone away from the site to rest and return to their families. Only he and Carrie remained at headquarters now.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty?" he asked her. She looked around the bare conference room, which had no signs of sustenance.

"I'm fine. How are you doing?" she asked. This was their first private moment since she had called his name in the room full of body parts. She had to call him twice before he turned around.

"To be honest, I don't know." He sat down in the chair right next to her and turned so that he was looking directly at her. "And I'm more concerned about you. About where you were for the 12 hours between the time that bomb went off and I saw you back here."

Carrie knew this was coming. And she had gone over her response, her story, in her head for what felt like a hundred times.

"You saw the video?" She said it as a question but meant it as a statement. Maybe he would lead them there on his own and she could just sit there quietly, giving an occasional nod or furrow of her eyebrow.

"Of course I saw the video. Brody's tape. Everyone saw the video. It's been playing on an infinite loop for a day and a half."

"So you know that they're framing him for this?" Again, it was a question but she meant it as a statement.

Saul tilted his head to the side. Carrie realized she'd have to explain everything. So she did. She told him about leaving Walden's memorial. How Brody saw his car out the window, out of place. She told him about dropping their guard and Nazir dying a thousand deaths. (She left out the part about being in Saul's office when all of this happened, about pulling Saul's gun on Brody. It felt too incestuous.) She told him about fleeing campus, just as the ambulances and fire trucks and squad cars began to arrive. About fleeing to her rainy day fund and Mike and the fake IDs. And she told him about the fire road and Canada. She told him everything. She said it all triumphantly, very matter-of-fact. This was her checkmate, because it finally all made sense. She felt compelled into action, into doing, and it was all she could do not to fish the bottle of pills from her bag and flush them down the toilet and ride that high for all it was worth.

When she finished speaking, she glanced at her watch and realized she had been talking for thirty minutes straight.

Saul inhaled deeply, put his chin in the palm of his hand and squinted at Carrie. She couldn't tell if he was just tired or trying to decipher some deeper meaning, some secret or hidden truth from what she had just told him.

"So he's in Canada now." Carrie nodded. It was Saul's turn to explain the facts. "And the C4 from the explosion was in his car. It matches the C4 taken from the tailor's shop in Gettysburg. Nazir's group released his tape. The tape that states he was retaliating against the Vice President and members of his national security team and the United States. The tape he made for the purpose to explain his suicide."

He let that linger there for a moment. Carrie could feel the seconds dragging on as the silence stood up like a barrier between them. Desperately he wanted to ask Carrie why she had let Brody go, why she hadn't gone with him.

Instead he broke the barrier and asked her one thing: "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand that the entire world thinks Brody did this," she fired back. She paused for a moment, not for effect but to compose herself, to straighten herself out, calm her voice, relax her muscles, and breathe. She continued. "But can't you see how he didn't? Can't you see that this is a set-up?"

"Of course I could see that. But what I also see is that the only people who know Brody's alive are you, me, and him." Saul's voice was steady and focused, barely above a whisper. She couldn't tell if he was seething with anger or cradling her from some darker truth, preparing for a fall into some dark abyss. Where was his checkmate? "And I can't go and tell the President that the man whose suicide tape is being played on an infinite loop for all the world to see is not only alive but also not behind this attack."

"I have to clear his name, Saul."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his temple before replacing them. "I get that. But you're facing a mighty task in the face of all this evidence against him." Carrie held his gaze discerningly, clenching her jaw.

"_I_ know. I just—"

"What?"

"Look, once we investigate this some more whoever is really behind this will come out. We will figure it out and then once we prove it wasn't Brody then—"

He stopped her again. "Carrie," he began.

"If we prove it wasn't Brody," she continued, "then we—"

"Then what?"

"Then we… " She paused, looked down at her fidgeting hands (she hadn't even realized she'd been playing with them) and then back up again at him. "Can move on with our lives."

He remained silent, looking at her, trying to discern what she really meant. _We_. We who? Saul had tricked himself into believing what Carrie had sold him for the past month, and now it had blown up in his face. But he had no choice but to trust her. Because she had earned it, he supposed. Because she had, after all, returned to him, the person who abandoned her, who told her that her happiness and her self were not as important as _them_. Because they were the only ones left, and he couldn't _not_ trust her. Because it was us versus them, and if he didn't, then they really had won.

He looked down from Carrie and fixed his stare instead on her still-moving hands. They were at a stalemate, in fact.

Carrie darted from out of her seat and over to her bag, fished out a pill, and swallowed it dry.


	3. Chapter 3

MORNING FIVE

Was this her life now?

It had been five mornings, five sunrises since she had seen him. She wondered if this would be her life, counting time. Counting days, counting hours, sunrises, sunsets, moon cycles maybe. She had watched him slip away into the darkness just five mornings ago. It was hard not to think of six mornings ago and let it seep in how much had changed from one to the next.

It seemed a cruel existence: a permanent clock fixed in her mind. As it was, her mind was already crammed full of too many details, too many facts, too many images. She thought she probably could not hold a continually ticking clock also, but if she had to give something else up, what would it be?

Perhaps the dates of her nieces' birthdays. She was never at the birthday parties but she always brought a gift the next weekend.

Or maybe the phone number of that guy she met at the bar that one night: Stephen… Somethingorother. Try as she might to forget it, she still remembered. One of those useless bits that, despite age and lack of importance, had burrowed its way into the depths of her brain and refused to let go.

Maybe then (maybe then) it would be the feeling of his hand against her cheek. He often brushed the hair away from her face, tucked it gently behind her ear and then let his hand rest squarely on her cheek. He had a habit of doing that.

_How many times makes a habit?_ Carrie thought to herself. She could think of five—no, six—times he had done it. Did that make it a habit? When she was thinking about it—about the two of them leaving everything they'd known and starting a life together—she imagined them forming habits together. Forming a life together.

She'd wake up first in the morning, unable to sleep in, and start making coffee. She'd fetch the newspaper from out front and crack it open before he even meandered into the kitchen. When he did, he'd sneak up behind her and clutch her waist and turn her around and every time she would jump. He had a _habit_ of doing that, of walking up noiselessly behind her, touching her so delicately. But she'd still flinch—every time she'd flinch—and turn around, slightly flustered, slightly annoyed. And then he'd brush the hair away from her face and rest his hand on her cheek, cupping it in his strong, calloused hand. "Good morning, love" he'd say (sometimes he'd whisper it, leaning in so that his entire body was pressed against hers, lean in so close that when he spoke she could feel the hotness of his breath against her face, and when he did that she'd shudder involuntarily). He'd always say it first, before she had the chance (she never remembered to say it first). "Good morning," she'd say back (sometimes she'd whisper it to him, if she was feeling playful, standing on the tips of her toes and craning her neck to reach his ear, and she'd have to take hold of his shoulder to keep her balance). Always he'd kiss the top of her head, turn around, pour himself a cup of coffee, and steal the section of the paper she'd already begun reading.

The funny this is, she'd chosen that life, she'd chosen that habit instead of this one—instead of this habitual counting—but now she strained to remember that sensation of his hand pressed against her cheek. She should have tried harder to remember it. She cursed herself for not trying harder to remember it.

And as she poured herself a cup of coffee, strong and black, she could have sworn she felt a wisp of something sneak in at her waist and graze her blouse. She flinched, turned around, and met only her blurred reflection in the stainless steel of her refrigerator. She sighed, picked up her mug, and walked purposefully out the door, grabbing her car keys from the dish by the door.


	4. Chapter 4

DAY SIX

Peter Quinn had talked to exactly two people since the day a bomb tore through the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Two people since the night he waited patiently in David Estes' bedroom, gun in hand, threatening to kill him. Two people since he convinced himself, the next morning, after threatening to kill David Estes but before a bomb tore through the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, that he was doing the right thing. That Brody didn't deserve to die. That Carrie didn't deserve to be broken. That he was a soldier but that he was also a guy who killed bad guys. That Brody really wasn't a bad guy. That Brody was actually a good guy and maybe (maybe) he was a good guy, too.

And then… David Estes was dead. So was Brody. Danny Galvez was dead, too. Carrie was not dead. Her name was not on the list of deceased persons that had been printed in the New York _Times_, printed so small he had to hover two inches over the paper just to make out the names.

He had talked to two people. First, to Dar Adal, to receive his next orders. They met on the city bus as usual and spoke in hushed, monotone voices. And then he called Julia, to assure her he was alright, that he hadn't been hurt. And to inform her of the new protocol. That was it. Two ten-minute conversations in six days. It wasn't unusual for him to go long stretches of time without speaking to other people. In fact it was better for him to maintain silence, like a monk, deliberate yet reticent. Like a soldier, focused and obedient.

As he sat in his car in the parking lot at Langley, Peter thought about these conversations, replaying them in his head. It was almost companionship, to rewind and play them over again in his mind. After years of a mostly solitary existence he had become quite good at creating this kind of artificial companionship.

Outside, the air surrounding Langley was still muddied and impure; it smelled burnt—burnt trees, burnt flesh. The stench, no matter how many times he'd experienced it, never failed to make him nauseous. He took a deep breath, a final inhale of the fresh air in his car, before opening the door.

As he walked across the parking lot, past the impromptu tents set up, down a caution tape-marked detour that led him to an alternate entrance to the building, he realized he recognized exactly no one here. Every face was brand new to him. As it was, there were not many faces there to begin with.

When he came to the entrance, he passed through a pair of metal detectors, was patted down by two separate security guards, and asked to give up his cell phone before entering. He passed through each barrier with little fanfare, unfazed by the newly placed security setup.

"I'm here to see Saul Berenson. Peter Quinn," he told the attendant waiting at the doors to the building. A few moments later he was given a visitor's badge and told to wait for an attendant here. Again, he obeyed silently.

Downstairs, in that same underground conference room where Saul and Carrie had had their first moment of privacy just five days ago, the pair, along with a small team of surviving analysts and a few transplants from the State and Homeland Security Departments, were sitting around a small table, staring up at a screen of greyish blurs. The screen was split in three, and they sat there, silently, squinting at the tiny boxes and trying to make sense of them.

A knock interrupted their meditation. Saul got up from his chair to open the door.

"Quinn."

"Hello, Saul. It's good to see you," Peter said.

"Same to you. I'm relieved you could be here. You know we could use all the help we can get," Saul said.

Across the room, Carrie barely glanced up from her work, surveying them intently out of the corner of her eye.

"Everyone, this is Peter Quinn. He's an analyst who's come to help us sort some of this mess out," Saul said. He felt like a teacher introducing a new student.

Everyone gathered around the table offered small smiles and half-hearted waves. Quinn nodded at them. He spotted Carrie there, too, dressed in dark jeans and a blazer. She was wearing her hair in a ponytail, which surprised him. He'd never seen her wear her hair in a ponytail. He rather liked it but forced himself to stop thinking about it.

Carrie got up out of her chair and walked over to Quinn, hands in her pockets. "Nice to see you. I'm glad you're here," she said. She didn't know what else to say or what to do. She felt very cordial, standing there in front of him like a stranger. Then again, maybe they were strangers now. _Should I hug him?_ she thought. _No, that's weird. Maybe a handshake?_ She kept her hands firmly in her pockets.

"Forgive us for the lukewarm welcome, Quinn. We've been sitting here for hours looking at this tape," Saul said. Internally, Carrie praised Saul for saying something to break the awkward silence. "Our eyes are a bit glazed over at this point."

"Don't worry about it. Is this the surveillance tape?" Quinn asked.

"Yep. On the left is tape from the entrance to headquarters. On the right is surveillance of lot C, where Brody's car was parked. The middle one is what we got of the entrance to the building, where the car was parked. It's pretty far away, as you can see. Most of the closer-up cameras were destroyed in the explosion," Saul said.

Quinn nodded along, pulling up a chair at the far end of the table, next to an older man with graying hair. Carrie took her seat at the opposite end of the table.

They all sat there—Saul, Carrie, and Quinn, plus a dozen other analysts and agents—for another hour, watching the tape play over in real time, scribbling notes on paper and on laptops. Occasionally Saul would pause the tape to discuss something, to float an idea, to call attention to a detail, or to rewind something that looked promising (very few things actually were promising, it turned out). The others would chime in, too, shuffling through papers to confirm a fact. Sometimes someone would say something and a woman seated next to Carrie would stand up and walk over to the white board to write something down in blue marker. The white board grew increasingly web-like, a convoluted map of theories and people and places and times.

Peter remained mostly quiet, adding input when he felt it was necessary or expected. He was more preoccupied with Carrie. A trained observer, he noticed everything. He stole glances at Carrie in spare moments, when her gaze was fixed downward at her black notebook and she wouldn't notice. He took in every detail. For one, Carrie hardly said anything. Occasionally she would nod or shake her head or offer a simple "yes" or "no." But little else. She sat up almost abnormally straight in her chair, her posture a thing of beauty, although uncomfortable to look at. In front of her was a black notebook, and next to it were three pens (one blue, one red, one green, plus the black one currently in her grip) and a highlighter. Every few minutes she'd glance at her watch, or at Saul, or at someone else in the room. (But never at Peter. She didn't look at him once after greeting him at the door. This he noticed first: that their eyes never met.) She was wearing pearl earrings. She had very little makeup on, a hint of bags under her eyes. After a half hour she removed her blazer and draped it over her chair. The blouse she was wearing was gray and sleeveless and she had left the top two buttons undone. Twenty minutes later she put her blazer back on (_Perhaps she was cold?_ Peter thought. _Or maybe just fidgety_.). Every few minutes she'd brush her hair behind her ears. She was writing mostly in black pen, switching to blue every few minutes, green once in a while, and red rarely.

After an hour, Saul stopped the tape for good. "Let's break for lunch everybody. I'll see you all back here in half an hour." There was a collective sigh from everyone at the table, whose eyes were beginning to look sunken and stomachs were beginning to rumble. One by one they filed out the door, engaging in small chatter, mindless talk about this and that, here and there.

But Carrie remained. She hardly missed a beat. She glanced at her watch, remained fixed in her seat, uncapped the red pen, and continued scribbling away.

Saul and Peter were the last ones to rise from their seats and head out. As Peter walked toward the door, Saul ahead of him talking sparingly about their progress thus far, Peter glanced over his shoulder, back at Carrie, still seated, still writing.

And then she looked up, looked straight at him, looked straight into his eyes. It was enough to make him stop dead in his tracks. A moment passed like this, their gazes meeting halfway across the cluttered room, intense, like lasers, before Peter turned, paused, and walked away. He thought he could probably still feel her looking at him.


	5. Chapter 5

TENTH NIGHT

She wasn't sleeping.

She couldn't figure out if she wanted to or not, but she couldn't turn off her mind long enough to try. She thought about a lot of things, lying in bed, the glow of the moon creeping through the windows and casting shadows onto the wall that played with her head.

She thought about Saul, about Mira returning, about how he had seemed to age years in just a few days. She thought about how his voice had become quieter and calmer but somehow more ferocious. He spoke sparingly, but with purpose, like every word he spoke might be his last. This disturbed her, but she wasn't talking very much either.

In fact she seemed to be drifting, floating away, like a balloon let go accidentally by a child at a parade. Floating up, higher still, abandoned. Were it not for that damned clock imprinted in her thoughts, the past ten days would have seemed fully like a blur. The days were beginning to run together, mornings seeping into afternoons bleeding into nights. The nights were the worst, with only herself for company. (At least at Langley, despite how closed-off she had become, she had the illusion of company, however artificial it was.)

She thought also about Peter, about how he seemed a different person to her, changed somehow. _Or maybe I've changed_, she thought. There was a distance there, the camaraderie they once shared but a distant memory now. He couldn't even bring himself to make a smartass comment to her. She couldn't even bring herself to care.

She thought about what this felt like, this blurriness, this feeling of being stuck. It felt similar to the depression that came in the wake of mania. She was tired, but she could not sleep. Restless, but she could not move. It was like being trapped in a nightmare and every day she felt lesser and lesser of the woman she once was, of the woman she was ten days ago (had it only been ten days?).

She thought about what it had felt like, that feeling of belonging, of not being alone. Of actually, maybe having a partner, someone to come home to, someone to sleep next to, someone to call at night and say "I'll be there soon." But she still came back to this empty place, to this shell. And no one was waiting for her.

_I'm going to be alone my whole life_. It was this poison, this dreadful poison that seeped into her veins and invaded her thoughts and dictated everything she did. She tried not to think about it, but it was the same with Brody. It was the same with him, and she had forgiven him for everything because of it. _Everything you did before would somehow not matter. _She turned on her side, like the thought, the memory itself was creeping toward her and she could not look it straight in the eye, for fear it would make her.

But she knew the how. She knew it then and she knew it now and she was too embarrassed to say it. _I'm going to be alone my whole life_. It was a scary thought: crushing, debilitating.

She thought about it, about the aloneness. And she thought about the depression and wondered which fed the other, tracing back as far as she could remember to try to pinpoint the origin of this messy, tiring cycle. Vicious was too kind a word for what it felt like.

She thought about Brody, too. (She desperately tried not to, but always she felt herself circling back toward him, like a home movie she could turn on instantly and revel in.) She thought about everything she could have done to change things and everything she actually did that ended up changing nothing.

She thought about where Brody was now, whether he was safe, whether he was afraid, whether he was thinking about her, too. She wanted to talk to him so badly; the pure wanting felt like it was eating away at her. Actually, she would settle for just being close to him, for not being alone, for breaking out of this solitary confinement.

"Will you visit me in prison?" he had asked her.

"I'll probably be in the cell next to you," she had said.

What a cruel joke this seemed like now. What a cruel joke.

She had talked about futures then, about _if_s and _maybe_s and she felt like throttling herself for being so presumptive. She was not a superstitious person, but from years as a case officer she knew better than to count victories before they were firmly in her hand.

And yet… and yet.

She thought about that night, about bringing Brody back from the edge, about saving the operation, about saving him. (How funny to think that she had saved him so many times and yet overwhelmingly it felt like he had salvaged something within her. Maybe he had, or had tried to anyway.) She thought about abandoning any pretense of anger she had, about letting go, surrendering to him. She thought, too, about how powerful she felt, in that room with him. A powerful surrender, that's what it was. Even then she could not escape the perpetual contradictions.

She thought about that next morning. He had kissed her shoulder and wrapped his arm around her. She had laid her head in the crook of his shoulder, and leaned into his body, into his warmth. It had been quiet there, right on the water. Quiet like that morning at the cabin, when he had decided to stay and she had decided to let him. It was peaceful there, too, like a calm before a storm. Peace felt now like some fleeting ideal, something she'd never attain, whether externally or internally.

What a cruel joke for it all to turn so suddenly. What a cruel joke.

She closed her eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's Note: I just wanted to thank everyone for the great feedback left on this story. It means a lot and motivates me to keep going. You'll notice the format of this installment is a bit different than past ones, particularly the use of tense. It was a difficult decision to make (to use present tense), but it felt right for this story at this moment. Everything will be back to "normal" in the next chapter. Thanks for reading!_

DAY THIRTEEN

More of the same. Languishing in those underground conference rooms, staring up at those projection screens like they are being hypnotized. Maybe they are being hypnotized.

DAY FIFTEEN

She fills up her first notebook, starts on her second.

DAY SIXTEEN

Her green pen is dry. Again.

DAY EIGHTEEN

Peter meets Dar Adal at Walter's Waffles for breakfast before going into Langley. They swap information, trade secrets, and are finished in the fifteen minutes it takes Dar Adal's chicken and waffles order to arrive.

NINETEENTH NIGHT

Carrie calls her sister to ask for more pills. It's been ten years and it's still awkward and clumsy to call and ask for this favor. But she has only one more left so she's desperate and grasping anyway.

Maggie tells her to come by for dinner and Carrie obliges. Maggie doesn't want to push Carrie for waiting until the last minute to get more pills and Carrie lacks the energy to put up a fight. They independently decide to give each other and themselves a break.

DAY TWENTY

Carrie and Maggie stay up late talking after Carrie's father and nieces have retired to bed.

"I'm worried about you, Carrie," Maggie says. It seems she just isn't able to make it through one meal without saying something.

"Don't be, I'm fine," Carrie says, taking a slow sip of her wine.

"You look… You don't look like yourself," Maggie insists. Carrie shifts in her seat. She feels attacked, provoked. But she also feels tired, and the wine has made her brain feel fuzzy and dulled.

"Look, it's been a long three weeks. No one is like themselves right now." Carrie is pleased with herself for coming up with such a diplomatic response, despite the buzz the wine has given her.

"I think you're working too hard." Maggie has a knack for dodging a potential conversation ender and probing still further.

"You remember how it was. After 9/11. Everyone was working hard. This is my job. This is my life." _Haven't we had this conversation before?_ Carrie thinks.

"You've lost weight." Maggie does it again.

"I haven't had much time to eat."

"Well, I'm worried about you."

"You already said that."

They sit there, in silence, and finish their wine.

MORNING TWENTY-ONE

Carrie takes her clozapine and a couple of pain killers for her headache. She hasn't felt this hungover since that first morning at the cabin. "You're a pretty good drinking buddy," he had said. The truth was that he was, too. It was fun to get lost with each other like that. To be reckless and inappropriate. The sex was pretty great, too. It feels funny, how totally removed she feels from that person, from that version of herself.

She vows to start eating more, no excuses. The problem is that there's not much food to speak of in her apartment. She opens the refrigerator: a strawberry yogurt (she doesn't even want to look at the expiration date on the carton), a container of Chinese food (_when did I order Chinese food?_ she thinks), a bag of shriveled-looking oranges (older than that clock stuck in the back of her head), and a jar of salsa on the door (which she opens and winces at).

She vows also to go to the grocery store on the way home from Langley that night.

TWENTY-FIRST LUNCH

Saul is surprised when Carrie knocks on his office door that afternoon with a paper bag in hand.

"Hi. Thought you might like some lunch. I ordered in some takeout. Greek," Carrie says.

Saul looks puzzled for the slightest moment but hides it well. "Sure," he smiles. "I'm surprised you're not still downstairs, watching those tapes."

"I can't watch those tapes anymore, Saul. I can't listen to the reports. Read the papers. None of it." It was like she had become numb to it all.

"I know the feeling. It'll all be over soon, though," he offers. They both pretend that they believe this.

"So… how's Mira?" Carrie asks.

"She's good. To be honest I think she's growing a bit weary of the pace here."

"Too fast?" Carrie asks.

"No, too slow. At least in Mumbai she always had something to do. She likes to keep busy, you know?" Yes, Carrie does know. She nods her head and smiles contentedly. She knows that feeling all too well. That everything around is moving in slow-motion, that she's the only one moving at a steady clip. That is mania.

They sit there for a while longer, sharing between them a Greek salad, a stack of pita bread, tzatziki sauce, lamb kebabs for Saul and eggplant for Carrie, and tabbouleh salad. It's very good, and Carrie makes sure to eat dutifully, until she's full.

"Delicious," Saul says. "Thanks for lunch." He gets up to throw the containers and plastic forks and paper plates in the trash, stopping at the door to shut it and the blinds that cover the window into his office. Carrie takes a sip of water, unaware.

"So… have you heard from Brody?" he asks. It's as abrupt and stark a question as she's ever heard from him. It's startling. And frustrating. And annoying. They haven't spoken of Brody privately since that early morning, since the twenty-fifth hour, when she told him everything.

"No," Carrie says, and she rises from her chair to leave, walking quickly past Saul. As she passes him, he holds an arm out and grabs her hand.

"Carrie."

"What?" she snaps at him impatiently.

"Will you sit down?" he asks her gently, letting go of her hand. She looks down, then up at Saul, straight into his drooping eyes. She decides to give him this. "Carrie…" he struggles with the words. "Carrie, we have reason to believe that Brody's no longer in Canada."

There is a pause. "What do you mean? Who's we?" she asks defensively.

"Me. The president. The acting Secretary. The Joint Chiefs."

"I don't understand, how do you know this? They think Brody's dead."

"They thought he was, yes. But there have been… leads."

"What? No, that's impossible," she says, shaking her head. This feels very familiar. How many times has she sat like this, in this very office even, and had someone tell her something that was so seemingly impossible had happened? Why were her limits on reality and possibility different than everyone else's?

"In Northern Europe. There have been reports—"

"No." She shakes her head, her eyes searching but blank. "Why didn't you say anything to me?" She is trying—and failing—to remain calm.

"Operational security," he answers.

"Fuck operational security! I deserved to know!"

"Carrie," he cautions her, raising a hand outward.

"So why tell me now? Did you kill him? You killed him, didn't you?" She can feel her blood pressure beginning to rise and she stands up, begins pacing. She tries to remember to breathe, to inhale and exhale, to stay standing. "I can't believe this," she pants.

Saul rises to meet her. "We did not kill him. I am only telling you now because I _do_ think you deserve to know. That Brody did not stay in Canada. That he fled." He reaches out to her as her eyes begin to water. "Carrie, I know this is difficult to hear, but these are not the actions of an innocent man." She inhales sharply, quivering. They're standing now just in front of Saul's door and she feels overwhelmingly like she might collapse.

She is unsure whom to trust. In fact none of this makes any sense and she's so convinced she is having some kind of hallucination when she feels a sharp and sudden pain in her stomach. That is how she knows this is reality.

Slowly Saul guides her over to the chair in front of his desk and seats her gently. He pulls up another one beside it and sits down, as well. He takes her left hand in both of his and holds it tightly. "I'm very sorry, Carrie. I'm sorry." (What else is there to say?)

"He's not dead?" she asks. Somehow she is still not processing any of this. So many tangents are running through her brain right now and bits of one are tagging onto ends of another. Some are becoming inverted, backwards. It's like she's having dyslexic thoughts. The pain in her stomach intensifies.

"No, he's not dead. We think he's probably in Northern Europe right now, making his way across the continent. Not staying in the same place for very long, though."

"But it's only been three weeks. How can—"

"Like I said." He pauses, for how long she cannot tell. Maybe a second or two. Or maybe a minute. Or maybe a whole half-hour. The meaning of time seems to collapse in on itself. On her.

Finally, he says this: "I just don't think these are the actions of an innocent man. I'm sorry."

He lets that linger for a second (or maybe five, or maybe sixty, or maybe a thousand; again, she cannot tell), and she lets it marinate, too, lets it wash over her and seep into her veins and she's not sure why she allows herself to believe it, to trust it.

They sit there like that, Saul hunched over, holding Carrie's hand in his two palms, looking up at her incredulous, tear-stained face. She doesn't look at him. In fact he thinks that she's probably forgotten he's sitting next to her, that she can no longer feel his hands over hers.

No, she looks instead behind Saul's desk, at the file cabinet that, in the bottom drawer, contains the handgun Carrie had retrieved just twenty-two days earlier. It was strange, disorienting to think about that day now.

"I don't believe you," she had said, tense but matter-of-fact.

But he had convinced her. Or had he? Yes, he definitely had convinced her. "Carrie? Carrie?" he had called out to her as her eyes darted side-to-side, taking in the weight of everything. And then her knees had buckled, giving way to that weight, to the whole world.

"Why is this fucking happening?" she had gasped as he removed the gun from her hands, removed the bullets, too. And then he had lifted her up.

"It wasn't me, it wasn't me," he had repeated, brushing the hair from her face and resting his strong hand gently on her cheek. Then: sirens.

They sit like that, her staring at the invisible gun, him staring up at her, for a while longer.

The next thing she knows, she's hunched over the toilet in the women's restroom, four fingers down her throat. It stings, it burns, but maybe it will make that pain in her stomach subside.


	7. Chapter 7

NIGHT TWENTY-ONE, PART I

Still sick to her stomach. Drove home in a state of delirium. Surprised she didn't crash her car on the way home. (At least a reprieve.) _Fuck_.

Walked through her door, didn't even bother turning on the lights. Headed straight for the bottle of wine. _Where's the fucking corkscrew? _Found a clean glass somewhere, in some cupboard, should probably be big enough. Poured a big glass. Downed it in ten seconds. _Fuck_.

Guided by the moonlight, walked over to her desk. Already feeling a little dizzy: the wine or something more sinister? _Fuck… fuck._

NIGHT TWENTY-ONE, PART II

It wasn't a good combination. The wine and her stomachache, that is. She knew she'd regret this in the morning, but then again that had never stopped her before. She had made a pretty sizable dent in the bottle of pinot grigio set in front of her. After gulping a glass her pace had slowed considerably. Now she took sips every few minutes. The wine was dry and crisp but it felt warm as it settled in the pit of her stomach. She was getting sleepy. Her eyes were beginning to feel heavy. Maybe she'd finally be able to sleep tonight…

NIGHT TWENTY-ONE, PART III

What time is it? 12:54. Shit, not even 1 yet. God, I'm tired… Maybe… I can just… close my eyes… and… fall… asleep… right here.

…

No, no, no. No. Get up, Carrie. Go to bed.

Ow, fuck, shiiiiit. Just… find your phone. Didn't I download that flashlight app a few weeks ago?

…

Oh, there it is. Heh. He told me it'd come in handy.

…

Fuck him.

…

Shit, I'm a lot drunker than I thought. Ugh, I feel sick. Oh God please don't throw up.

…

Where… are my pajamas? Do I want to shower? Maybe I'll feel less dizzy if I take a shower? And get this shitty day off me…

…

No, I'll probably fall over in the shower, and who would be here to notice? Ha. Ha.

…

Brush your teeth, Carrie. And take some Advil. Oh, water, too, good idea.

…

Did I call Maggie to get more pills? Oh, yeah, right. When did I do that? Was that on Sunday? Shit. Was just, like, the day before yesterday? Fuck.

…

How many, like two? Maybe three for good measure. Mmm… please work.

…

Oh, my God, water. This tastes so good. Maybe I'll take a few sleeping pills for good measure. That sounds good.

…

Oh, my God, I'm so tired. Oooooh this bed feels so good. Oh my God, this bed is so comfortable. Shit, why have I never noticed this before? Oh my God, I'm never getting up out of this bed.

…

Okay, now close your eyes, Carrie.

…

…

…

He fucked you over, Carrie.

…

…

…


	8. Chapter 8

DAY TWENTY-THREE

It echoed in her head. Every minute it echoed in her head. The funny thing, she thought, was that it shouldn't be able to echo, given how much was crammed in there already. It shouldn't have the room to bounce back and forth and creep in and settle. So maybe it didn't echo. Maybe it just sprouted up everywhere, like a virus, implanting its DNA here and there and before she knew it she was infected. Maybe it echoed. Maybe it grew. But it was there. Every minute it was there.

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

She hadn't gotten out of bed in over a day. She hadn't showered in two. The last thing she ate was lunch with Saul, before he had told her what she least wanted to hear, before the virus had feasted on her vulnerabilities.

She _was_ taking her pills. She put the bottle on her bedside table and swallowed them dry. She thought, for a brief moment, that she might like to flush them down the toilet and ride that high and forget about this all. But she quickly soured on the idea when she realized there was nothing she felt like doing that the mania would push into overdrive. She thought, too, for an even briefer moment, that she might like to swallow them all at once and finally be put out of her misery. She hated thoughts like this but it was easy to get caught up in the tragedy of her life when she felt as if she were withering away. And after all, wasn't her life a tragedy? (God, she was so dramatic.)

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

She had said it. Pointed a gun at his head and put her finger on the trigger. She had been ready to shoot. It had been impulsive, as so many things with Brody had been. It was strange to think about that day, to think about him, to think about them together. Often she questioned how she wound up there, at this place—at that place where she had so wanted to be, with every obstacle removed—and it was strange (that was the only word she could think to describe it) how one event just led to the next.

On an impulse she had decided to watch Brody's house after taking down the surveillance cameras. On an impulse she had decided to bump into him and lead him outside and talk to him. The rain started to come down as if in a movie. It was strange.

On an impulse she had decided to meet him at the bar that night before the polygraph. She gave off the impression sometimes that she had a much grander, more masterful plan—at work, in love, in life—than she really did, but the truth was she was making this shit up as she went along. It was her worst-kept secret and also her best-kept secret.

She hadn't planned to drink anything that night but…. One thing led to the next. She could think of no better cliché to describe the web that had entangled her and Brody, that had wrapped them up in each other, like tethers, unraveling at the seams and clinging to each other like people grasp for life preservers. She hadn't even planned to let Brody fuck her that night, or the next one, or the one after that. (She _had_ planned to let Brody fuck her that night in the motel. She had _not_ planned for Saul and Quinn to listen in like perverts at the same time.)

It was a connection built on impulses and it pained her to think that, if she had chosen any other impulse, she might not be lying here on this bed, hiding in the darkness, letting the guilt and the anger and the indignation eat away at her.

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

She could not and she could. She cannot and she can. Past and present, no and yes. Their connection was one built on paradoxes and extremes. Two wrongs don't normally make a right, but it sure felt like it when he looked at her, when he kissed her, when he touched her. There was no logic. It felt like he had electricity seeping through his fingertips, but without fail she felt a powerful calmness overwhelm her whenever he placed his hands on her. It felt at once like the deepest, most romantic parts of depression and the sexiest, most delirious parts of mania. She never knew what he was going to do next but could always predict it. She loved him and she loathed him, in the deep parts of her heart and her head that rise up with passion unannounced. She felt at once that she could kill him and also that she would die for him.

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

She could have killed him. Right then. Right there. And yet this felt something like dying for him. Right here. Right now.

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

She didn't think she could see into it. Could anyone, really? Could she even see into her own? Would she want to? She wasn't sure she'd like what she found there. It was very confusing. Everything seemed out of place and out of order, nothing was straight.

She thought back to the timeline, to the fallow yellow and creeping toward purple and laying low and coming alive. The timeline was for Nazir, but could it have been for Brody, too? Was she his fallow yellow? Did she ease him into green? What was his purple?

She reached over and uncapped the pill bottle and swallowed one dry, all in one swift motion, like mechanics.

What she really wanted was to talk to Saul. Did Saul really think that Brody was guilty? Did everyone else think so? Had he told anyone else? She had a thousand questions swirling in her brain, about Brody, about Saul, about fallow yellows.

She decided then to turn her phone on, for the first time in two days. She had turned it off on the twenty-second morning, not wanting to take any calls or talk to anybody or even speak at all. It had been so long since she spoke that she imagined her voice would be hoarse and meek when she did finally utter a word. She remained silent anyway.

Saul had sent her eight typo-riddled text messages. Maggie had left a single voicemail, "just to check in." Saul had left five.

"Carrie, it's me. Please call me back. I'm worried about you." "Carrie, it's me. Look, I really want to talk to you, but you're not answering my phone calls or messages or emails. I need to talk to you. Please call me back." "Carrie, it's Saul. I haven't heard from you all day. Are you all right? I'm coming over. Please call me when you get this." "It's me again. I went to your house and you didn't answer. Please answer. I'm worried about you. Please call me back when you get this." "Carrie. Please call me back."

She dialed his number.

"Carrie, thank God," he answered on the other line.

"Hi." Her voice _was_ hoarse. She said it again to make sure he heard her. "Hi."

"Why didn't you answer your phone or your door? Are you okay? Is everything okay? What's going on?"

"I'm sorry, I just, I turned my phone off and forgot about it. I didn't mean to worry you. I'm sorry." She felt her voice growing shakier with each word. Her nose began to hurt the way it did when she walked outside when it was bitterly cold. She had a lump in her throat.

"I'm going to come over right now."

"No, don't. I just, I want to be alone right now. I'm really tired. I'll see you at work tomorrow, I guess."

"Are you sure? Can I bring you something?"

"No, I'm fine. Don't worry…. Okay… bye." And she hung up. She couldn't handle Saul being upset with or worried about or scared for her. It felt too much like disappointment. It ate away at her, too.

_I can't see into your fucking soul. _

_Yes, you can. _

Yes, you can.


	9. Chapter 9

DAY SEVENTY-TWO

It was morning, the sun bright and white, creeping through the windows and illuminating her face in a way that didn't entirely displease her. She had been awake for nearly an hour now. It was unusually warm in her bed.

Sometimes she felt like the mornings were the worst. She felt so lonely. So abandoned. What was holding her in place? She felt so stuck. Trapped.

The truth was that some days were actually good. Some days she woke up in a kind of stupor and brushed her teeth and showered and dried her hair and spent more than five minutes putting on make-up and prepared a bowl of oatmeal and actually sat down and ate it and didn't look at her cell phone until she got to her office and she talked with other people and she talked to Saul and she didn't feel bitter or angry or sad and she didn't go home and drink too much wine and fall asleep on the couch and she actually felt normal.

Some days were like this.

The truth was also that some days were worse than she could have ever imagined and she felt not just lonely, but isolated. Like she was in a silent, black and white movie and everyone else around her was speaking, in full and vivid color. She spoke and no words came out. Or maybe no one could hear. Maybe no one was listening. On these days she felt like lead, dragging on living and breathing and eating and sleeping and working. On these days, the momentum of the permanence of her loneliness hit her hard and fast. She found herself fighting back tears in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, tampering anxiety attacks in the stairwells at Langley, searching for a peace of mind that seemed cruelly out of reach.

She told herself that the days were getting better, that the good days were outnumbering the bad ones now.

But lying here, in her unusually warm bed in the early morning hours, she couldn't help but let her mind wander to him. She didn't let herself think about him often. It made her feel nauseous and weak.

But this morning she did. In fact being right here, in this almost deliciously warm bed, reminded her of a morning, not too many months ago, when her eyes had fluttered open and let in the morning sun and she had allowed herself the secret of a smile lying next to him.

On that day she felt normal. On that day she woke up and went to get coffee and pastries like a normal person would. It felt very habitual, like something she had been and would be doing forever. They were on a vacation. They were enjoying a bottle of wine together not because of the drunkenness that made them feel freer and sexier but because it seemed like a normal thing to do. Sometimes, when two fucked-up people are together, the fucked-up parts cancel out. They're erased, like they never were, phantoms of past lives and mistakes. And so she felt normal. He did, too. The calmness, the _normalcy_ of that weekend, felt foreign but it also felt good.

_But we could be happy, couldn't we. _

Was it a question or a declaration? She had allowed herself a smile there, to reassure him, to reassure herself. She was powerless anyway.

Turning over on her side, away from the window, she felt a coolness envelop her, like a welcome shadow.

_We could have been happy, we could have_, she thought.

She would have learned to cook. He would have shown her how. He was such a good cook, and she was hopeless in the kitchen. They could have gone up to the cabin every weekend. There was so much there that she never got to show him. Like hers and Maggie's other expeditions, to secret ponds and to that bridge they'd fashioned over one long, hot summer. They would have sat on the dock in those old wooden chairs. She would sit beside him, barefoot, as he read a book, one hand in hers and the other stroking her hair over and over. She would steal glances at passages as she watched the sun set over the water. He loved the water.

It was all so perfectly normal. Perfect and normal. They would have been happy. She would have been happy. She could be happy and normal. She could. _I could be happy_, she thought.

If today was a good day, she would think immediately that she still could be happy and normal. Or as normal as her job would allow. As normal as her illness would allow. That would be enough. She could still have that. With someone else, yes.

If today was a bad day, she would think immediately about the rest of her years, about growing older and growing more alone, retreating into her life, becoming a ghost, a shade of herself. It was as horrifying a thought as she'd allow herself on this day.

If today was a good day, she would remind herself that Brody was innocent. That she _could_ see into his soul, could see it in his eyes, could sense it. It wasn't him. He was fleeing because he was afraid. Afraid like she was. One day the monsters who did this to him—to her—would come to light and the peace of mind she'd so been seeking would come to her, like a warm embrace.

If today was a bad day, she would remind herself that Brody had fucked her over and this truth would harden her, rekindle that pain in her stomach. She couldn't see into his soul. So sure and _so_ wrong. She could hardly trust herself enough to remember that, yes, she locked her front door, yes, she knew how to get to Langley, yes, that was Saul she just spoke to. It all just disappeared.

Today: today felt like something in between. Not good but certainly not bad. Because as she thought of Brody, of that fleeting bliss in their final days together at the cabin, she felt a sharp pain in her nose, the kind she got when she was about to cry. But she did not feel sad. Instead, she felt hopeful. Hopeful for what, she wasn't sure. Hopeful for a good day, for good news from Saul, for no traffic on the way to work. She felt that maybe today she would feel normal and that would feel good.

She stole a smile and slid quietly out from under the covers, walking away from her unusually warm bed. She ran her fingers through her hair and paused at the dresser, above the empty glass dish.

"Don't leave," she heard a voice say. She paused, startled.

And she was feeling hopeful. Because when she turned around she was met not with his visage—tousled burnt orange hair and stubble, eyes barely open, impish smile—but with another entirely.

Their eyes locked again as she twisted the ring on her finger.


	10. Chapter 10

DAY SEVENTY-ONE, HOUR TWENTY

She didn't know why she put the ring on. She didn't even know why she was here.

She hadn't put the ring on in months. Not since her first night back at her apartment post-ECT. Her memories of that night were hazy. A mixture of alcohol, pills, nausea, and sleep could do that. But she did remember Saul, arriving in the middle of the night, showing her that tape. That was the night she had realized Brody had fucked her over the first time. That was the night she realized she was right. That was the night she realized she had probably known it all along. Darkness followed by light. Hitting rock bottom and then looking up.

That night she had opted for an escape, for an easy way out, but she could not bear it. Cupping those pills in her hands, gulping down a bottle of wine, allowing herself a moment of peaceful serenity: she was killing something. Perhaps not the whole, but parts.

Nearly half a year later, here she was again. She was wearing the same short black skirt, the same sequined top, the same hoop earrings. In nearly every way she had changed since that fateful night, but how curious that she looked virtually the same.

She fingered the small tumbler placed before her, swirling around the tequila. In one swift motion she downed the rest of it. "Another, please," she nodded at the bartender. How many was that? Two. _Pace yourself, Carrie_. She reached into her purse and checked her phone for the time. It was half past eight and the bar was half-full.

What exactly was she here for? In the past she'd come around to this jazz bar every week or so, striking up a conversation with a stranger, making sure to place the diamond on the engagement ring precariously in sight. _Caution: one night stand ahead_, it seemed to say. She'd do her best flirting, sly smiles here, sidelong glances there. Without fail he would invite her to get a table, or go somewhere else, or maybe follow her to the bathroom (this scenario poked at something volatile in Carrie; it thrilled her).

But tonight. Tonight she thought maybe she'd just like to listen to the music. To the raucous trumpets, the discordant piano, the sizzling percussion. It soothed her, because for whatever reason she had a swirl of butterflies fluttering around in her stomach and not even the two drinks she'd already had could calm them.

As the bartender placed her refill in front of her, she heard a familiar voice.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

She couldn't help but smile as she turned in her seat and saw him. He was standing there, tall and stoic, wearing a pale blue button-down, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

"I'd ask you the same thing," she said.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked, gesturing to the stool beside her. She shook her head. "So what brings you here?" he continued as he sidled up next to her.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," she responded. They exchanged looks—knowing, mischievous, daring (who could tell?). What was her endgame? What was his?

DAY SEVENTY-ONE, HOUR TWENTY-ONE

"Another, sir," he barked, rather forcefully, clinking the bottom of his class to the bar and running his fingers through his hair.

"How many is that?" she asked, finishing her drink, too.

"I've lost count," he answered finally, smiling at her.

"So have I," she sighed, grinning back. She propped her elbow onto the bar and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. Then she turned to look at him.

"What?" he said, half-annoyed, half-flattered.

"Nothing." A pause. "You know, we've been sitting here at this bar for over an hour and you still haven't answered my question."

"I have, too!" he said playfully. "You asked me how I've been in the past few months: good, pretty tired. How I'm adjusting to Langley: the transition's been as good as I'd expected. Where I live: Georgetown. How I like my apartment: nice area, pretty expensive." Carrie rolled her eyes as he went on. "Am I still seeing that ER nurse? No—remember I wasn't that into her? What else…"

"No, why are you here tonight? I didn't know you were into jazz."

He narrowed his eyes at her as the bartender placed their new drinks in front of them.

"You weren't… following me here, were you, Peter?" Yes, she was feeling mischievous, and very drunk, because she normally wouldn't have said something so bold or narcissistic.

"What? I can't enjoy some jazz?" he countered.

She remained silent and took a small, pensive sip of her tequila. She looked back at him. "I'm going to… use the ladies' room. Be right back," she said, sliding off the bar stool and walking away from him. After a few steps she turned her head back, toward him, and their eyes met. He was looking at her, too.

He clenched his jaw, downed the rest of his drink, and paused for a brief moment before walking after her, thirty paces behind.

In these moments they were strangers. She was not Carrie Mathison and he was not Peter Quinn. They were strangers, foreign and unknown, and all the more exotic. He had not been watching her intently for the past three months and she had not been pretending not to notice. They were strangers.

He had spotted her in this bar and struck up a conversation. She was wearing an engagement ring, which he thought was strange, but figured she wouldn't be enabling him if she wasn't also willing.

She had come here to enjoy the music, but also maybe to meet someone. These nights were the antidote to her loneliness, a quick and easy remedy that would dull the pain. That and the tequila. She wore the ring to weed out the men who were looking for anything more than quick and easy.

They were strangers but they played these roles of Carrie Mathison and Peter Quinn so well. No. They were Carrie Mathison and Peter Quinn but they played the roles of strangers so well. The two realities seemed to bleed into each other, until they were at once strangers and themselves. Both and neither.

Seconds later he was standing in front of the ladies' room, staring at the doorknob. This was either the best idea or the worst idea. Perhaps it was both. Or perhaps it was neither.

He placed his hand on the doorknob and twisted. It was open. He walked in.

DAY SEVENTY-ONE, HOUR TWENTY-TWO

They were drunk. Drunk on everything: sex, tequila, bourbon, each other. Intoxicated.

They fucked in the bathroom. Twice. She was waiting for him when he ambled in. It was quick and easy. And it felt really good.

He was buttoning up his shirt now and fastening his belt as he walked over to her. She was standing over the sink and looking in the mirror, smoothing her hair. She turned around when she saw his reflection.

"Let's get outta here," she whispered sharply, staring up at him, eyes wide and wanting. He leaned into her, backing her into the sink, and kissed her deeply. Their mouths tasted warm and slightly sweet from the alcohol. She gripped onto the edge of the sink, cool and smooth, as his pressure intensified.

"Okay. Let's go," he said, pulling away. He stepped aside, opening his arms to the doorway. "Ladies first."

She bit her bottom lip. God, she wanted him. She would have had him, right then, but she felt in her gut that a line was forming outside, that a half dozen voyeuristic patrons were standing with bated breath, ears held up to the door. What she didn't realize is that they had been in there for thirty minutes and if no one had called security yet they wouldn't be anytime soon.

Instead she gave him her most knowing look. She stared straight into his icy blue eyes, piercing him. They weren't strangers now. She _knew_ him. And he knew her all too well.

She kissed him again, grabbing the front of his shirt, nearly ripping off a button. He countered, taking back control, stepping forward. She backed into the door, the small of her back digging into the doorknob.

It was a game between them. Cat and mouse. Something she wasn't entirely unfamiliar with, but it was thrilling nonetheless. She craved this. She forgot how much.

A second later she bit his lip, opening the door behind her with one hand and pushing his body away with the other. It was teasing. The next moment she was gone.

He caught his breath, one arm outstretched, hand against the door. He looked at his watch to see how much time had passed since she'd left. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Sixteen. They seemed to pass like hours.

After half a minute he had collected himself and deemed it safe to exit. He inhaled deeply and smoothed the front of his shirt (he looked down quickly to make sure she _hadn't_ ripped off any buttons).

A minute later he was hailing a cab as she stood impatiently beside him. They were both too drunk to drive home.

DAY SEVENTY-ONE, HOUR TWENTY-THREE

Now he was the one waiting impatiently behind her as she fumbled with her keys and unlocked her front door. Finally they entered and as soon as he crossed the threshold behind her it was as if a switch flicked. All bets were off. At once she threw her keys into the dish by the door as he slammed the door shut behind him, locking the deadbolt.

Before she could turn around to meet him he backed her into the wall, pushing his tongue down her throat as he removed his coat and threw it to the ground. Gasping, she fumbled with his belt as he clumsily undid the buttons on his shirt that just a half hour before he had spent such care fastening. Soon enough the buckle was free and his shirt was half open. He pushed her into the wall again, with such force that the dish on the table beside her rattled. He either didn't notice or didn't care. This thrilled her, too.

He kissed her neck, raking his fingers through her limp hair, pulling back on her neck. She groaned weakly, much as she tried to contain it. He slid his other hand up her skirt, teasing down her panties as she awkwardly stepped out of them. They, too, went to the floor. She countered, snaking a hand up his half-open shirt and digging her nails into his arched back.

"Fuck, Carrie." She dug harder.

What was he doing here? _Here_, in this place, where she had let him in so many days ago, where he had kissed her wounds, still fresh and raw. Now he was half a world away, replaced. The wounds had become mere scars, and each tick left them staler, faded.

Tonight she was opting for an escape, an easy way out. Maybe _easy_ wasn't such a bad thing. This felt good, his tongue in her throat and his fingers pressed on the inside of her thigh. She opened her eyes for a moment and looked up at him. At his eyelids, the arch of his brow, the sparse freckles on his cheek. It was amazing how much she could see when she was this close—mere inches—away from him. She had never looked at him this closely without him staring back. He allowed her a moment of peaceful serenity before sliding his fingers higher. Tonight she was killing something else entirely.


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's Note: Story's back! I'm refocusing myself on this story and am very excited about where it's headed. Thanks for reading and sticking around in this long absence!_

* * *

DAY EIGHTY-TWO

So it had been ten days. When she added the seventy-two everything went back to normal, but still, her brain had seemed to reset on the seventy-second day, gone back to zero.

She sat there, in Saul's debrief, chin propped on her hand, mind obviously elsewhere.

He sat next to her, relaxed, leaning back in his chair and twirling a pencil in his hand the way that boys did.

She could feel it in her veins—a chill, a buzzing. It was just his proximity, being so close, just a dozen inches away from her. She turned her head slightly to see him. He was looking at her ravenously. She turned quickly away.

"Well, if no one has any questions, I think that's it for today. Good work everybody. See you all tomorrow," Saul said.

Carrie stood up sharply and was the first person out the door. She made her way quickly to the elevator. He was trailing behind her, just enough distance to make his presence known, but not so close that anyone would suspect they were going somewhere together. As it was, Langley was still rather thinly populated. And everyone else was going home anyway.

Carrie walked into the elevator and Peter followed her in a moment later. She pressed the button for the top floor as he stood behind her, hands clasped in front of him idly. She looked up at him as they began to rise. He hovered behind her and clutched her waist. She could feel his hot breath against her neck as he swept her loose hair over her shoulder. He breathed in deeply.

"Not here," she whispered.

Just then the elevator doors opened and they walked out into a vast expanse of empty cubicles. No one was there. The fluorescent lights overhead came on, prompted by their hurried steps below. Carrie walked with purpose, her feet hard and steady against the carpeted floor.

Eventually they reached the end of the hallway, arriving at a corner office that was abandoned, deserted. There was still office furniture in it, but no one worked here anymore.

She entered slowly, the door creaking softly as it opened. She turned around and he was standing there above her, eyeing her greedily. She tugged at his shirt, careful not to rip any buttons (she'd been learning from experience), and pulled him toward her. He leaned in to kiss her and bit her lip; she moaned in spite of herself.

Mostly their movements were well-choreographed and fumble-free. They knew each other. She knew how tightly he fastened his belt buckle. He knew she only wore lace panties. He knew where it hurt her, and where it felt good. Usually they were one and the same.

And so they fucked, right there in that abandoned office, Carrie propped up on the empty desk, her heels wrapped around his legs. They were conspicuously quiet until they end, when she cried out in release. He brought his hand up to her mouth and stifled her, looking straight into her eyes.

They hadn't even closed the door.

Which was part of the thrill, for Carrie at least. Fucking in an empty office, when anybody could walk in on them. It reminded her of that motel with Brody, when she knew that Saul could find her there. She hadn't known they'd been listening in, and she made sure to feign righteous indignation the next day, but being the subject of such perverted voyeurism got her off… just a little.

Each time they fucked they were in a different place. In Carrie's office, which she had never actually stepped foot in before then. In Peter's car, late at night. In a four-star hotel room they'd booked just for one night and just for one purpose. In Carrie's kitchen, in Carrie's foyer, on Carrie's desk. Never in the same place twice. It was thrilling for her, to think of new places they could go and escape to. But it also made everything less permanent, leaping from one place to another, drifting. The lack of permanence made it all less real. It satisfied her hunger for him but left her—and him—wanting more. On the eighty-second day, she could not imagine a better setup.

When they were finished she slipped her shoes back on and fastened the bottom buttons on Peter's shirt. She sighed heavily, smoothed her skirt, and started for the door when he grabbed her arm and kissed her again, raking his fingers through her hair and squeezing her wrists.

She nearly let go, nearly lost herself right then. How much easier this would be if she just gave in, decided to close that door, maybe take him with her. Instead she pulled away and walked out of the office.

She took the stairs, eager for the many flights downward to collect herself and right her thinking. She walked all the way down to the basement, where she'd left her things. As she went to gather them, she checked her watch; it was only seven o'clock. They'd been fast.

"Carrie," she heard ahead of her. She looked up and found Saul standing before her, his sleeves rolled up as they always were, his glasses askew, his face ragged and tired, sunken in. "I thought you'd left."

"Not yet. I was upstairs, um, looking at something." She was lucky that Saul had become so distracted that he didn't even recognize anymore when she was lying to him.

"Leaving now then?" he asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yes. I promised Mira I'd be home early for dinner tonight."

"Right. Well, tell her I said hello."

This was what their relationship had been reduced to now. Pleasantries. Formalities. Carrie wondered when it had become that way. The distance hurt her, hit at something deep and volatile in her heart.

Saul smiled at her and walked away. Carrie meandered into the control room where she'd left her things. Her bag, a stack of random papers, and her black notebooks. It was all sitting there, abandoned, amid the rows of tables and chairs, projection screens, and sprawling investigative diagrams the team had been working on but to which Carrie had contributed very little.

She sat down and sighed heavily. She felt very tired all of a sudden.

Carrie took one of her notebooks in her hands and opened it up. The first few pages were densely consumed by a rainbow of black, blue, red, and green ink. It was a labyrinth of words and ramblings, time stamps and rough-hewn maps. She began to turn each page, looking at everything she'd written, some of it illegible, most of it incomprehensible.

She had written "6-14" in big block print, underlining it three times in red. She had no idea what it meant. Was it a date? A range of numbers? She was bewildered.

As she continued flipping the pages, going from one notebook to the next, the writing got sparser and sparser. Atop each page she'd written what day it was. Day 4. Day 6. Day 8. Day 15. Day 20.

It began to trail off after Day 21. Day 25. Day 30. Day 43. The last thing she'd written had been on Day 68. Fourteen days ago.

She felt sick, looking at these pages, looking at the progressively thinning trail of information. And then she felt it again: guilt. It bombarded her from all sides.

"I'm going to clear your name, Brody," she had told him, out there in the darkness, those headlights casting them both in an orange glow. How intently she had reigned in her focus when she returned. Pages and pages filled with theories and postulations. Numbers and letters and she strained to remember now whether she'd ever made any sense of it.

And then came the twenty-first day.

At the time, she'd been filled with a rage and an anger—so much hatred at the world and at Brody and, yes, at herself. _He fucked you over_, she told herself over and over again. It was an easy excuse that allowed her to retire from those sleepless, manic nights. She told herself that so many times that she came to believe it with conviction. _He fucked you over. _

But he hadn't. He hadn't played her. She knew it. She knew it better than he did. She knew it in her heart—in her brain, too. He wasn't guilty. At least not of whatever they were accusing him of. It was inconceivable.

She believed in those two realities—the guilty Brody and the innocent one—simultaneously. The former allowed her to feel less guilty for not being to keep her promise, the latter for letting him go. She had saved his life that night, she repeated over and over, too. No amount of work could change that he had put on that vest. She couldn't erase that. She had forgiven him for it, but no one else would.

She wasn't sure when she had given up on clearing his name—in essence, given up on him. It was frustrating, searching constantly for that secret hand tic, that fallow yellow, all those dots that would align themselves and then she would connect them, superhumanly, into a whole, a constellation. Rotate it this way, darken this one, then it made a picture.

But it was a bunch of bullshit as far as she could tell. There was nothing she could do to convince Saul to convince everyone else that Brody was innocent. Not without implicating herself and implicating Saul and leading them right to Brody. She was trapped as much as Brody was. They were all trapped. She felt the hatred rise up in her again, like fire.

She flipped to Day 27. "AC ES" was written in red ink. She remembered she'd switched the letters in case anyone got hold of her notebook. "Canada Sweden" is what she meant. She guessed he'd gone to Sweden, holed up in someplace remote. It was just a guess—for all she knew he was in Denmark or Russia, who the fuck knew?—but writing something down that was tangible and concrete and real made her feel like she was getting somewhere. She knew deep down that she wasn't.

She wondered what Brody was doing now. Was he waiting for her to contact him, to send a message in the stars that said, _I've got it. I did it_? Well, she had nothing, she'd done nothing.

Eighty-two days had yielded nothing. She was so empty.

Had he believed her, when she said she could clear his name? She had given him her word, which was all she had to go on. That had once been enough, standing outside that prison, looking up at him guiltily. It was not enough anymore.

She shut her notebook. Leafing through all the physical reminders of her inadequacy was frustrating her but her mind wouldn't let it go and moved instead to her emotional inadequacies.

Peter. Brody really hated him. And now she'd gone and fucked him who knew how many times. Let him touch her everywhere Brody had and many places he hadn't. Let him fuck her in hotels and offices and backseats and…

She inhaled heavily as she, in spite of herself, felt a tingle crawl up her spine just thinking about it. _You're a horrible fucking person_, she thought.

Fucking Peter felt not like betrayal but something even dirtier, even filthier. She knew that the likelihood of Brody ever even finding out was slim at best, but the guilt could still eat away at her. It could still eat her alive.

She was just surrounded by guilt. Everywhere she looked. Guilt for forcing Saul out. Guilt for not being able to do something more for Brody. Guilt for not saying anything after Walden had died. Guilt for leading Peter to believe she was interested in anything more than casual fucking. Guilt for selfishly accepting it all.

Guilt at every corner. Everything else had died but she had survived. She had abandoned Brody there on that fire road and returned to Saul and then just languished. The decision had seemed so clear then, at zero hour. She didn't understand how she had fucked up everything—how everything itself had become so fucked up. Everything else had died but she had survived. And that killed her.


	12. Chapter 12

DAY TEN (NIGHT EIGHTY-TWO)

Peter took a few moments to gather himself. He smoothed his shirt, put his hands in his pockets and took them out several times over, re-laced his shoes. He bit his bottom lip in an effort to steady himself. He was still quivering, just barely. Slowly his heartbeat returned to normal.

He looked down at his watch. It was only seven o'clock. They'd been fast.

He sighed heavily and closed his eyes. He tried to remember who he was before Carrie had come into the picture. What was it about her? He was a soldier, the guy who killed bad guys, not some lovesick—no, not lovesick—man who could not pay attention in a debrief because all he could think about was the inside of her thigh, the way it pinked when he pressed his fingers there. The scent of her hair—something citrusy and sweet. How she grabbed the back of his neck and made his hair stand on edge.

He shifted his posture and clenched his jaw.

In some way his attraction to Carrie infuriated him. It made him feel weak, powerless and helpless. But then he remembered the way she sometimes muttered his name—"Peter…"—under her breath, mousy, just a whisper, right before she climaxed. That made him feel in control, that made him feel powerful, that made him feel like a man.

But that was it with Carrie. How intently he tried to read her, to get a gauge on her. His efforts were mostly futile. She was a walking contradiction. Ever since Dar Adal had assigned him to work with Saul here at Langley he had watched Carrie intensely, stolen glances and hovered covertly, never making himself seen. He watched as she dedicated herself obsessively to her job in those first few weeks. Late nights and early mornings. He doubted she slept much at all the first few dozen days afterward. And then, as if by some invisible force, she became resigned. Detached. It was an obsessive detachment, right on the heels of her detached obsession. She seemed to know only two switches: on or off. She was either at a screaming high pitch or cruising on autopilot, her eyes covered as if by a veil.

She was like that with him, too. They called it hot and cold, he thought. Today she had been hot, which was odd, since usually at Langley she maintained that detachment. Not so much hard to get as impossible.

But then the water would change and she would be waiting by his car, her back propped against the driver's side door, her knee bent slightly, one hand on her hip and the other resting gently on her leg.

He had been startled when he saw here there, on that third night, long after everyone had left Langley, long after Saul had left.

"_Surprise seeing you here," he said coolly. _

"_Why's that?" she asked, her tongue visible through her barely parted lips. Some might call this seductive. _

"_Thought you'd forgotten about me." He was standing right in front of her now, his waist pressed into hers, pinning her against the car. He breathed her in. Her hair was hanging loosely around her face. _

_She shifted beneath his weight. "Well I didn't," she said, and he felt something stab him in his foot. He looked down. Her heel. She had stepped on his foot. "Sorry," she added, looking down. _

_He tilted his head, cocked it to the side and brought his lips to her ear. "Get in," he said. He reached his hand down, grazing her breast and pinching at her side. She stared down at his slithering hand, which was reaching behind her to open the car door. _

_She smiled at him, an uneasy smile evident from the way she furrowed her brow at his forceful direction. She looked around the parking lot. There were no other cars to be found. It was literally the two of them, all alone. Who would ever know? _No one_, Carrie thought, and she'd by lying if that thought didn't annoy her just a little. _

_She stood up on her toes and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He stepped forward, backing her into the car. She exhaled. He maneuvered the door open behind her and fell into the driver's seat. She began to fumble with his belt buckle as she climbed in after her him, straddling him as she sat, his legs open and her sitting in his lap. He slid his hand up her dress and eased her panties down. She stepped out of them awkwardly, the space tight between just the seat and the steering wheel. _

_He heard her gasp a moment later and he grabbed her waist with his hands, bringing her into him. She clutched the head rest with one hand and pushed back on his chest with the other, riding him. _

_She reached for his shirt collar, gathering the fabric in her fist, pulling him up to her, up to her lips. She kissed him, her teeth grazing his upper lip. _

"_Peter…" she whispered, the letters spilling out of her mouth and hovering, still above them, as her body tightened around him. _

Peter looked at his watch again. Seven ten. It was beginning to get dark outside. He started to walk out of the office and toward the elevator when he tasted something metallic in his mouth. He realized he'd been biting his lip the whole time and brought a hand to his mouth, blotting the blood with his finger. "Fuck," he mumbled to himself.

He got in the elevator and rode it all the way down to the basement. He pleaded silently that Carrie would not be there. Hopefully she had just gotten her things and was already headed home. He had to meet Dar Adal at eight o'clock and he knew if Carrie was there she'd want to drag him to some supply closet and fuck him. Something crazy like that.

He needed to have his head clear and Carrie-free for this meeting. He could only imagine the shit Dar Adal would give him if he was unfocused and remembering the fuck Carrie had just given him or the reflection of his icy eyes in hers or the tingling of his hair on end.

When he reached the basement it was again deserted. People had started to arrive earlier and leave earlier these days. Like everyone's schedule had moved up collectively one hour. It was bizarre. He couldn't blame them, though. Nighttime in this building felt like walking around in a coffin, dark and bleak and stale. At least in the mornings there was the sun and the dew and some sign of life. At night it was like everything had died.

He hovered outside the control room, peering into the window, one hand on the doorknob. Carrie was still inside. Of course. She was seated in front of her notebooks and pens, reading them, flipping the pages, tapping her foot idly against the carpeted floor. He swallowed and twisted the doorknob.

She turned around at the sound, startled.

"I thought you'd already left," she said.

"I was gonna say the same to you."

"Plans tonight?" she asked, closing her notebook.

"I'm meeting a friend from college at eight. For drinks."

"Ah," Carrie said, nodding her head. _A lady friend?_, he imagined her asking. She said nothing. Instead she stood up and began to gather her papers and notebooks into a neat pile, stuffing the pens into her bag that hung from off the chair.

He sidled up beside her and gathered his own papers. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow," she said, swinging her bag over her shoulder. She smiled at him—a friendly smile, which set him on edge. He grabbed her arm roughly from behind and pulled her toward him. He kissed her, tightening his grip around her arm.

She pulled away, putting her hand over his and unclenching his hand from around her. "I thought you had to meet someone."

"I do." He wouldn't relinquish his gaze; his eyes pierced hers, pierced _her_.

She turned her head toward the door, out into the expanse of cubicles. It was empty out there. In here: the fluorescent lights shining overhead, illuminating just their bodies, the low glare of the monitors on the wall reading "NO SIGNAL."

"Not here," she whispered to him, a bit like a teacher scolding a child.

This only irked him further. He walked around behind her and then stepped close to her, into her. He placed a hand on the small of her back and reached for her neck. He brushed her hair to one side and pulled his head forward. "Here," he whispered into her ear.

_Here_.

She arched her shoulder forward and he could see the goose bumps on her arm, her hair standing on edge, too. Her posture was rigid in front of him, terse and defiant.

Slowly he eased a hand down her back, just an inch or two, begging her to stop him, to walk away. When she didn't he snaked his hand around her waist and down her stomach, reaching under her skirt, ruffling her blouse. She let out a breath.

Still he waited for her to walk away. But as he slid his hand farther down her body, delicately despite the mere weight of his hand on her, she stirred, twitched.

He was sick of her hot and cold shit. Maybe this would do it. Maybe he would fuck her so hard and so passionately and then walk away like it meant absolutely nothing to him and she would sit there, her mouth stupidly agape.

She grabbed his hand and turned. He smiled in spite of himself when she did, and they began again. She reached up to kiss him, like she always did, wrapping her thin hands around his neck, like she always did. He grabbed her legs and she wrapped them around him, locking them together just below his waist. He stepped forward and propped her on the conference table, gripping its edges as she began to fiddle with his belt buckle and zipper, like she always did.

He arched his head forward to kiss her and she slid her fingers over the nape of his neck, fingering the ends of his hair.

"What—" she said suddenly, a moment later. He pulled away and looked at her. She was nearly out of breath. "Are there cameras in here?" she asked, her eyes wide.

So this is where she drew the line. He wanted to say, _So what if there are?_ But that rang so grossly false to him that he answered a curt "No" and pulled her into him.

She inhaled sharply and arched her back straight and stiff, throwing one arm to the side to steady herself, knocking the notebooks right off the table. He pinned her hand there, gripping it tightly.

But it didn't come this time. In fact they were silent, rushed and finished a few moments later. He looked at her and saw she was biting her lip. He remembered the blood on his finger earlier.

It was only a second or two later when she said, "Don't you have somewhere to be?" She was still sitting on the table.

He swallowed. "Yeah."

He watched as she maneuvered out from under him and began to tuck her blouse back into her skirt. As she picked her bag up from off the ground, her notebooks, too.

He hated her for this. "You missed a loop," she said, pointing to his waist. He looked down at his belt and nodded. He started again at it.

"While I'm at it…" he said slickly, pulling the belt out again.

She smiled. "You're going to be late. I'll see you tomorrow."

That was the last thing she said before she walked away. He thought that she had added something to her exit, maybe moving her hips more, perhaps hitting the floor more forcefully with her heels, making her steps sing.

Her hips, her heels, her loose blond hair.

Thirty minutes later (he had not been late; she wouldn't have allowed it), sitting in a booth across from Dar Adal who relayed every piece of intel he had, Peter still hadn't shaken the thought of her. If he concentrated hard enough he could hear that whisper, that breath of a sound, the echoes flattening out and settling like mist onto his skin.


	13. Chapter 13

NINETY-SECOND MORNING

She had started letting him sleep over. After that first night it was always quick and then they'd part and it would almost be as if nothing had ever happened if not for those residual pangs she felt rise up in her chest just from the thought of him.

She had acquiesced five days ago. He had showed up at her door unexpectedly. She was about to go to bed, in fact, when she'd heard the doorbell ring and his loud knocks against her brick red door.

It seemed cruel to make him leave and drive back to his apartment—or wherever the fuck he lived, she still had no idea—after he'd done her a sort of favor.

"_You can stay," she said, her words permeating the silence as he gathered his shirt from off the floor. "If you want," she added meekly. _

_He looked up at her quizzically. "Okay." _

_She smiled, a weak smile, forceful and strained. _

He had slept next to her every night since. Carrie liked him sleeping over, she liked the feeling of his radiating heat and that both sides of her bed were actually taken up. She liked waking up next to somebody—she didn't really care who it was.

It had been three months since she'd seen Brody. She remembered that whenever they'd slept together—it had only been a few times, so it was easy to remember—he would sleep almost in the center of the bed, pulling her close to him, the curves of her body fitting neatly into the grooves of his.

Peter kept firmly to his side. He slept almost abnormally rigid. He slept face-up, his arms by his side, like he was lying in a coffin. She thought it was strange but didn't say anything.

At least he was there.

At least someone was there when she woke and when she slept.

She noticed other things, too, about Peter. He was beginning to become more relaxed around her, less hard, less steely. His edges were softening and she knew it was because hers had, too. She had allowed herself to soften in places.

Last night he had come over early in the evening, carrying a bag of groceries.

"I told you I'd make you dinner," he said. She eyed him nervously. She guessed he was as good a cook as she was—which was to say, _not_.

"You did." She opened the door and held out her arm to wave him in. He ambled into her kitchen and began unpacking the groceries he'd bought.

"The woman at the market showed me some stuff to make a really good pasta dish. No meat, like you like." She smiled to herself.

"Do you need any help?" she offered. She wouldn't be any help but felt it polite just to ask.

"Nope, I'm good. Go relax."

"Okay…" she replied, the uneasiness clear in her voice. She stared at him as he began rummaging through her cabinets searching for pots and pans or… she had no idea actually what he was looking for.

She walked into the living room and sat back on the couch, picked up the papers she'd been looking at before he'd knocked. She began reading them idly, not really taking anything in. Every few moments she'd hear a loud noise and look up startled toward the kitchen. But she didn't want to intrude.

She may not have known how to cook, she may not have been the most easygoing person, but she recognized that what he was doing was kind.

All over again she felt shitty. For all of this. For letting her mind wander to Brody, who would cook for her, too. For letting him sleep in her bed as a thank-you for fucking her and not asking too many questions. For saying "yes" and "no" at exactly all the wrong times. She looked down at the papers and memos in her hands. For not giving enough of a shit to read these any further.

She was so tired.

When Carrie woke the next morning, still groggy from the night before, Peter was still sleeping next to her, straight as a board, as always. She wondered if that was just how he slept or if he was deliberately giving her space.

She strained to remember the previous night. She remembered the pasta (it actually had been good, though she hadn't been that hungry). Some movie had been playing on TV (she couldn't remember which one). Had they had sex?

She was only wearing a bra and panties so she thought that maybe they had. Had she blacked out? She hadn't had that much to drink, had she?

She felt a little like she was going crazy, losing, it, and headed for the bathroom. For how shitty she felt she actually didn't look too bad. Her eyes looked a little heavy, but nothing too frightening. Certainly she had seen worse.

She fished her pills from out of the aspirin bottles. Even though she no longer had to hide them she still kept them there. Out of habit, maybe, or an acute sense of paranoia.

Suddenly she felt his hands slide over her stomach and she jumped up. She looked into the mirror and saw his reflection, standing there in a t-shirt and his briefs.

"Oh!" She exhaled.

"Did I scare you?"

"Did we…" she started. She felt embarrassed for still feeling so uneasy talking about it.

"Did we… have sex? No. Unconscious women aren't really my thing."

"Did I black out?" she asked. It felt like rooting around in the dark.

He laughed. "No. You fell asleep around nine o'clock. While we were watching _An Affair to Remember_. Guess you were really tired."

It all came back to her. She nodded. "Yeah, I guess."

She turned around to meet him, looked up at him curiously. "So you just stayed over?" she said, trying not to sound accusatory.

He blinked. "Would you rather I left?"

"No, I just—" she started and then sidestepped out of his shadow and walked back to the bed. She ran her fingers through her hair.

She wished she wasn't such a bitch, such a horrible person. She knew that it was a nice thing that he'd stayed. That he'd been there. That he'd taken off her jeans and sweater so she'd be more comfortable. That he'd made her dinner and taken care of her and carried her up the stairs so she wouldn't wake up with a crick in her neck.

She knew all of these things and yet she felt distinctly annoyed.

She wished she didn't.

He walked back toward her. She looked up at him and realized how tall he was. Taller than Brody.

"Look, I can tell you're getting sort of freaked out."

_Oh, God. Here it is_, she thought. Were they really about to have this conversation?

"I know… that you have trouble. Being close."

She furrowed her brow. That annoyed her, too. He didn't really know her at all, but she didn't say this. She swallowed.

"After… everything," he continued. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.

What the fuck was he getting at?

"I'm not asking to be your boyfriend. I'm not even asking to date you. I know that you don't want those things."

She bit her lip.

"But I think we have something good here."

She tilted her head to the side.

"I like… talking to you."

Carrie tried to remember a conversation they'd had. A sober one.

"I don't like to talk much and you don't say much."

_Oh. _

"I like sleeping next to you."

She wondered if in his bizarre sleeping configuration he'd ever even touched her.

"I like working with you."

She could give him that. He was annoying as fuck to work with but he was a hardass and she needed that. Mostly she hated him at work but she did _appreciate_ him.

"I like how smart you are. You don't take shit from anyone. Not even me."

Was he trying to compliment her? It struck her that this was perhaps the strangest conversation she'd ever had with anybody and she had verbally assaulted a neo-Nazi once.

"And I really like kissing you," he said, snaking one arm around her back and pulling her up to him. He kissed her then.

She felt her stomach twist inside her body and her posture slacken a bit as he raked his fingers through her hair.

She sighed deeply and grabbed at the bottom of his t-shirt and began working it up his chest. He helped her, pulling it up and over his head. She dropped it limply beside them.

She smiled. His hair was lopsided from sleep and he looked a little goofy there in front of her. She pushed him backward onto the bed and he looked up at her, startled by her sudden aggression.

He gripped her waist as she positioned herself on top of him. He began to ease her bra straps down around her shoulders and she countered, training her eye downward to remove his briefs.

And then she saw it. A scar, a finger's length long, off-color and raised against his abdomen.

She froze. Swallowed hard and dry. She felt her entire body tighten, from her feet to her neck.

He could see her posture change, too. She was crouched beside him, her knees between his legs and her eyes like lasers on that scar.

He looked down to see what she was staring at.

"It's okay," he started when he realized. "Just a scar."

She looked up at him for the first time since, her eyes seeming to express some profound grief that he did not understand. He could see the sadness there, amid her tangled hair and slouched shoulders and the one black bra strap hooped around her arm.

She placed her fingers on it, just to feel it. It felt smooth and supple beneath her touch and she allowed her fingers to scratch it gently.

He couldn't feel that, though. It was still numb.

She lowered her head and brought her lips to it, so much like déjà vu she could actually feel the heat behind her even though the air was grey and still right there, the shades still drawn on the window. She kissed him softly, on his stomach, up his abdomen, below his clavicle, the stubble on his neck, his cheek rough and scratchy, too.

Then she kissed him on his lips.

All the while she kept one hand firmly over that scar, feeling the smoothness of it.

This could be easier. This could be easy, if she let it. She slid her hand down below his waist and tugged at his briefs, kissing him still and slow.

He exhaled and she smiled, satisfied that his breathing seemed to have become strained. She sat up then, and unhooked her bra, letting it fall easily behind her.

_This could be so easy. _

He sat up next to her now, too, looking into her eyes, and he could see them emerge from under that veil and he kissed her and she didn't fight him, she let him.

_This would be easy. This will be easy. _

She let herself feel more than just the pleasure but the actual closeness and his fingers enlaced with hers and the roughness of the scruff on his cheeks. And she let herself whimper as she felt the sweetness of his touch extend outward from her body like electric pulses.

This _was_ something good and she knew it. She let that wash over her, she submerged herself in it, like a sweet drowning, and she began to drift as she looked over his shoulder, clutching him close to her chest, holding the back of his neck, moving slowly and methodically.

He slid his fingers down her spine and his breath was hot against her cheek, condensing immediately and then evaporating a second later. That heat again.

And she was about to whisper _his_ name in Peter's ear when she caught herself, emerged from below, gasping for air.

"Peter…" she said, and he kissed her.

This would not be that easy.

She could not trade one man for the other. He was not Brody. He would never _be_ Brody. She would never see Brody again. And yet the more she came to believe that, in the truth of this promise, the more she longed for him, the more she longed to be clutching his chest, kissing his scars, sleeping next to him, touching his lips.

_You're a horrible fucking person_, she thought, as she milked her orgasm for a few moments longer.


	14. Chapter 14

FOURTH MONTH

If they were in the movies, that morning there, that Sunday morning with the sun just barely up and the way she touched him, her fingers extended as far as they would go, pressed firmly against his back, as if she was clutching something but not holding onto it—if they were in the movies, they would call that _making love_.

They weren't in the movies, of course, and Carrie actually despised the phrase. _Making love_, as if it was something you could conjure out of thin air through pleasure and closeness. But it wasn't a screw, it wasn't a fuck. It was different. Certainly.

The moment she saw that scar and she could have sworn it was his and so she kissed it, because she felt she had to, and she could have sworn his hair was burnt auburn, too. "Brody," she wanted to say, a whisper she'd said before to herself but never out loud, never.

"Brody," she wanted to say, and she almost had, her lips had pursed to say the "b." She never realized that the "p" started the same way.

She hadn't said his name though, she had said Peter's, hushed it into his ear and let out a low and smooth moan after, relaxing her entire body except for that one hand and those outstretched fingers.

He had been silent except for a few loud exhales and when he caught his breath finally he kissed her just below her ear.

"Peter," she said again, a bit defeated. Her eyes began to droop as she let that pleasure wash over her, dulling her senses, making her tired all over again.

In the push-pull of Carrie's mind, the more she pushed Brody away, the more she felt pulled to him. Push him out of your mind, don't think about him, bury those notebooks, burn it all. But she couldn't escape him. It only made her focus on him more, on what he was doing, on what she had missed, on how it could have all been different. That fucking tape.

And the more she felt pulled to Peter, the more she wanted to push him away. He was handsome, he was smart, he was here, he was making her dinner, sleeping next to her, he was here.

Carrie prided herself on having excellent instincts. A good gut. It occurred to her that maybe she felt the need to push Brody away for a reason. And maybe she felt pulled to Peter for a reason, too. Maybe this was her brain chemistry and her gut and her heart telling her, _it's okay_. It's okay to move on.

She thought about Jess. About how she'd waited six years after the death benefits started to arrive and then Brody had hung her for it. And Carrie could hardly wait three months.

She supposed it was different: a man going to war and then dying, a man walking across the border knowing he was going to die. It was different. She told herself it was different.

She told herself it was okay to let Brody go and let Peter in.

So it was slow at first.

That Sunday morning, after she'd muttered his name twice and they'd fallen onto their backs, she kissed him for the first time like she meant it. She smoothed her hand over his cheek and pressed her lips to his, not even having to force her eyes closed.

"That was…" he began, swallowing. His breathing was still out of sync. She smiled and scratched her fingers gently over his chest and kissed his neck.

Later that day she went to the drugstore and bought a toothbrush head for him.

The next night he stared at it like it was a bomb. "What's that?"

"Haven't you ever seen a toothbrush head before?" she said, slightly annoyed.

"For me?"

"It's just a toothbrush head. Look, yours has a black band and mine has a blue one. This way I don't have to deal with your morning breath." She dried her hands and then walked past him, standing in the doorway, smiling his skeptical smile.

A day later she started letting Peter drag her to lunch. She truly hated lunch breaks—she found them a waste of time and too filled with loathsome small talk—but she pecked at her salad and watched him eat and let herself feel semi-normal.

She had forgotten about the "no sex in the same place twice" rule and it didn't really make a difference, which she was happy to discover when they'd had sex on her kitchen counter (because what else was it good for?) for the third time.

. . . .

The next weekend he took her to the park for a run despite her pleadings that he wouldn't like her during exercise.

"You need to build up your strength. You're skinny, but you have no muscle!" he said to her playfully.

"I don't like running."

"You will."

When they'd done one loop around the park and Carrie was out of breath, nearly doubled over and clutching her side, Peter started laughing.

"Fuck… You," she huffed. It only made him laugh harder. He stepped toward her and bent over to her ear.

"What if I told you… I'd make it worth your while?" he whispered.

"Are we trading sexual favors for cardio exercise?"

"Maybe."

She made it one more lap around the park before sitting down on a bench and refusing to run another step. Later that afternoon, he made it worth her while.

Afterward, they lay in her bed, as the glow of twilight peaked in through the windows, Carrie staring out into space as Peter methodically stroked her hair.

"How come I never saw you all those years at Langley?"

"You were in the Middle East," he said.

"But when I came back, before I got my next assignment. I can't believe I never ran into you."

"I was on the Venezuela desk."

"Right," she said pensively, her voice a low whisper.

"We just ran in different circles, I guess."

"Yeah."

He bent down toward her and kissed the top of her head.

"I wonder..." she began absent-mindedly, forgetting he was there.

"You wonder what?"

"If we had known each other, before this, if we had known each other... I just wonder."

He smiled and kissed her brow.

She let herself close her eyes and fall asleep to the sweet hum of the heat through the vents and the soft swoosh his fingers made against her loose hair.

. . . .

Peter had slept at her apartment every night for the past… well she had lost count o how many days. So, a week later, when he told her that he had a late meeting and would just sleep at his place she suddenly found herself at a complete loss.

It hadn't been too long ago when this was the norm, when the loneliness was the norm, the cavernous confines of her apartment a trap in their airy, choking expansiveness.

She hardly knew what to do with herself, which sickened her, because she hated the thought that she needed a man to keep her entertained. She tried to think of what she used to do at night before Peter. Before Brody, too. Before Nazir. That was a long time ago.

It occurred to her that she had never really been lonely, at least not before Peter. These men had always been at the center, at the top of her bulletin board, scattered throughout, their patterns and movements and faces, like her own little audience. They'd been in her home. Oh, God, they'd been in her home.

Of course, she still felt lonely then. Like she might be alone her entire life, just constantly searching, constantly looking for someone or something, like reaching into a dark room and expecting to find light. It just didn't exist. It wasn't there. And that made it all the more unsatisfying, all the more debilitating, all the more nauseating.

To have an obsession is a lonely thing. To focus your mind so rightly on one thing, to make it the center of your universe, the reason for your existence. Only in death was she ever able to just let it go. Nazir had died and almost like magic she allowed herself to erase him from her brain, not like he never was, but very nearly something like it.

Only in death. She wondered if she'd go on like this forever until she knew, one way or the other, whether Brody was out there still, alive, heart beating.

Because it did not feel like it. She was not a superstitious person, she didn't believe in psychics. She believed in logic and methods and patterns. But she also felt like, if Brody was dead, his body no longer, his heart and head now remnants, she would have felt it. She would know, in some deep and unreachable part of her soul, that he had gone. She would wake up, maybe, and feel different but not be able to explain it.

This is what she imagined. This is what she thought of on her night alone. Of Brody. It made her sick and guilty but, if she admitted it, less alone, too. What had he said once? That it felt good despite all the other shitty things it also felt? He was not there but, yes, he _was_ there. With Peter, even, as much as they both made a conscious effort to expel him from between, he remained.

He was the invisible yet wholly apparent object at their center. Carrie had started to try to let him go, to think about him less, to feel less like a horrible person every time she climaxed. To not think about _his_ lips when she kissed Peter, _his_ scars when Peter removed his shirt to take a shower, _his_ smile when Peter made her laugh.

But even now, letting her mind wander to him on her first night alone in many weeks, she couldn't shake the guilty thought that she was cheating on Peter with Brody. Or, worse, cheating on Brody with Peter.

One step forward, two steps back.

It was frustrating. So fucking frustrating, to feel like she was making progress—in work, in life, in love, in something, anything—and then to feel like she was losing it, losing her grip.

That same way everyone had looked at her like she was crazy just when she was finally starting to see clearly. She saw all those colors, so lucidly and vividly she could have reached out and touched them, felt them, covered herself in the high purple. And everyone just called her crazy, psychotic, fucked.

She decided to go to bed to quicken the arrival of morning. And then back to people, out of this emptiness. She hadn't realized how ill-equipped she had become for it. How weak that made her feel.

One step forward. Two steps back.

_Why do I feel like this?_ she asked herself, an echo from before, of that ghost.

"Why do I feel like this?" she had asked him, out there in the dark, so silent except for his hushed words in her ear. "This was love," he whispered, as if to confirm her worst fears.

A love that was so painful she would have rather had it shocked out of her. A love that shrunk her stomach and made it so hard to forget. So hard to move some days.

That was love, wrapped up in all her hatred and doubt and sadness. At the heart of it, that was love. Born from a suspicion, from chance or fate or something sordid really, something calculated and planned and dirty and false.

Born from his insistence that she was delusional, psychotic, _horrible_. Shock that out of yourself, too, make yourself clean. Clean but for that love, that horrible, despicable love at the center, the kernel of everything, the nucleus, actually, impossible to split without certain mutual destruction.

Born from all the awful and cruel things he had done to her and she to him. Fuck yous and mind games and dirty tricks and teases, use and abuse and twisted indoctrination. That was love.

Born from their brokenness and their wholeness together, the black and tarred parts brushed away or else gone unnoticed. Only then though. Only then.

Born from even thoughs and despite thises and that's okays and I don't cares.

Born from that one weekend and the way she had kissed his arm when he woke in a sweat, scared and frightened, so like her it was as if she was staring into a mirror. "I just want to live here, for a second," he'd said. That was the beginning of love, the beginning of _here_. A here that became _there_ and then they just had to get back to it.

Born from it just wouldn't matter anymore. That was love.

That was her idea of love, something that had to hurt in order to feel good. It was just the way of it. Something that had to be wrapped up in pain and betrayal for strength and structure. Rise above it, it will make the love more powerful.

Born seemingly instantaneously. One morning she woke and the love was there, woven into her being. It felt completely natural, almost as if it had been a part of her forever, and she would have believed it if not for the feeling that she had been hit by a freight train for how intensely her heart ached for him.

That was love: sudden and unannounced, unexpected and yet completely natural. Something that happened overnight and once it had, all those nights before just ceased to exist. They did not belong to _her_.

That was love: an all-consuming, unconditional, universal thing. It had no boundaries, it was limitless. It was the way out for both of them, the only one. One way in and one way out.

Sometimes she felt she hated Brody so much that she loved him—yes, she still loved him, _despite_ her best efforts, _even though_ she knew it would be easier not to. All that passion fueling something that wrapped her up and encompassed something bigger than she could grasp, grander than she could understand.

It was like that with Brody. Just thinking about him brought out deep-seated feelings of wrath and frustration but also of supreme longing and comfort and dizziness. It was like that with Brody, but not with Peter.

She could not explain it. She could not explain that thinking about Peter brought out something resembling lust in her, something resembling comfort, something resembling stasis. She could not explain it except to say that Peter had never wronged her.

He had never betrayed her, never made her believe she was crazy, never fucked her over or even told her to fuck off. How could she hate him?

And so how could she love him?

. . . .

The next weekend Peter convinced Carrie to go for another run with him. She obliged but only under the terms of their initial agreement. (She didn't tell him that running made her feel closer to Brody somehow, because he had been a runner. She hated herself for thinking like that.)

As Peter was lacing his shoes, Carrie filled up two water bottles.

"Hey, how come we never sleep at your place?" she asked. It had been bothering her for a few days but had slipped her mind for one reason or another.

"I thought you liked sleeping here. All your stuff around. Your own toothbrush head. I don't have a toothbrush head for you at my apartment," he said, smiling.

She capped one bottle and then the other and turned the tap off. Peter walked up behind her and placed his hands around her waist.

"Anyway, why does it matter?" he asked, sweeping her ponytail to the side and kissing her neck.

"I've never even seen your apartment," she said, trying to focus even as his lips moved across her neck, his hands farther down her front.

"I didn't know you wanted to."

He slid a hand up her top and caressed her breast.

"You're right. I don't." And she slipped out from beneath his grasp, handing him a water bottle and grabbing her hat from off the kitchen table. "Are you coming?" she said, holding her keys as she walked toward the front door.

He followed her out.

. . . .

Three days later Carrie was standing impatiently by the coffee maker, waiting for it to brew, when Peter walked down the stairs.

"Morning," he said softly. He kissed her shoulder from behind. "Have you seen my coat?"

"I think it's on the couch."

"This cold spell is crazy so early in the fall. How many days has it been like this?" he called from the other room. Carrie nodded to herself and began to pour coffee into her travel mug.

And then she froze.

When Peter walked back into the kitchen, he hurried toward her. "Hey, hey, hey!" he shouted, grabbing the sponge from the sink.

Carrie blinked and looked at him. Then down at the puddle of coffee pooling on the counter, forming a film at the top of the mug, dripping off the counter and onto the floor. He grabbed the pot from her hands and set it on the counter.

"What day is it?"

"What?" he said, shaking his head, staring at her as he wrung the coffee-soaked sponge out over the sink.

"What day is it?" she repeated, this time more desperately.

"Uh, Tuesday? What, Carrie—"

She rushed past him to her desk, pulling a notebook from out of her briefcase, flipping it open frantically. She began muttering to herself in sevens, scanning her index finger over the pages: seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five, forty-two, forty-nine, fifty-six, sixty-three, seventy, seventy-seven, eighty-four, ninety-one, ninety-eight, one-oh-five, one-twelve, one-thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. One-seventeen.

"Carrie." She turned and he was standing right over her. She closed the book with her left hand. "What are you doing?"

She swallowed. "Sorry. I… Sorry."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She walked back into the kitchen. "Sorry about the spill." She grabbed a paper towel and wiped down the still-wet counter.

"It's okay," he said, the look of concern still not wiped off his face. In his eyes, in his wrinkles. He touched her arm and she twitched. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yes. Perfect." She smiled at him, her lips closed shut. "I gotta go. Early meeting. Take your car." She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him, grabbed her mug, and swung around toward the door.

_One-seventeen_, she mouthed to herself. _One-seventeen, one-seventeen, one-seventeen, one-seventeen, one-seventeen_…


	15. Chapter 15

DAY FOURTY-FIVE (DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN)

He heard the door slam and the clack of her heels hitting the brick steps before he looked down and realized he was still standing in a pool of her coffee. He grabbed a towel from the drawer next to the sink and began mopping it up.

But he still couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with her. Something _was_ wrong with Carrie. She had darted straight to her desk and began mumbling idle words under her breath as he stood there, transfixed by her, the hot coffee spreading out over the counter like blood.

He knew she was lying when she said she was fine. When she said she was perfect. He could see it in her eyes, a glazed over look, something painful and tired jutting out from her irises. And just when things had started to become normal, to become _good_. Then she contracted from his touch and tightened her jaw and closed off. He didn't want to force the issue, but he still couldn't shake the feeling.

He placed the wet towel in the sink and washed his hands. It was only seven-thirty. He paced for a few seconds before giving in to his impulse, walking up the stairs two at a time, into the bedroom. The sheets were still in disarray and the morning light was peeking through the window. He walked into the bathroom; there were still faint traces of steam on the mirror from when they'd showered together that morning.

He approached the sink and opened the mirror. He hesitated for a second, noting the exact placement of the white aspirin bottle and which way the label was facing, before grabbing the bottle and uncapping it. He walked back into the bedroom and spilled out the contents onto the bed, a mixture of blue capsules and tiny white discs gathering in a pile. He counted the blue capsules: five.

Today was Tuesday. Carrie got seven each Sunday from her sister. So she had taken one yesterday and one this morning. She hadn't skipped. He gathered them all in his fist and poured them back into the bottle before replacing it, exactly as he had found it, not even an inch off.

He washed his hands again, partly because he was paranoid they would have some faint aspirin smell that Carrie would be able to sniff out later, partly because he felt dirty for doing this. It felt like something nasty, something shameful. He told himself he was doing this out of protectiveness, that he had to take care of her now, he had to make sure she was diligent and mindful. She didn't need taking care of, he knew this, but he still felt some kind of duty just to make sure.

But it still made him feel dirty, every time he did it. Not even the relief of knowing that she hadn't been skipping her meds could ease his suddenly anxious mind, because that was not why she had acted so _off_ this morning.

Just then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out to find a message from Dar Adal: "WW. 830."

He looked down at his watch. It was only quarter to eight, but he decided to leave anyway. He breathed deeply, calming himself, and rushed down the stairs, grabbing his keys, and locking the door on his way out.

When he arrived thirty minutes later at Walter's Waffles, Dar Adal was already there, waiting for him in a corner booth, fumbling with the newspaper. There were only a few other patrons there. He walked over and slid into the booth, not even saying a word.

"Coffee?" Dar Adal asked.

"No thanks, I've had enough today."

"I'll make this quick then. Looks like you'll be able to right that fuck up from a few months back."

"What are you talking about?"

"Brody," he drawled in a type of sing-song way.

Peter was silent. He furrowed his brow. Dar Adal still hadn't taken his eyes off the newspaper. He was reading the sports section.

"Guys in the Northern Europe division tell me that he's been living in Norway. Lofoten Islands."

Peter remained silent, fixating his eyes on a singular inch of newsprint, trying to read it upside down.

"Brody is dead" was all he could think of to say. Something certain. Or what he thought was certain. He couldn't wrap his mind around it. Not even a single inch.

"Not yet." Dar Adal finally looked up from the newspaper, closing and folding it neatly in front of him. Peter looked up at him.

"He died. He died in the Langley explosion. His car."

"Sure makes a convenient story, doesn't it?" Dar Adal offered a hint of a smile. There was a twinkle in his eye that made Peter's hair stand on edge.

"How can he be alive? His… that tape."

"I didn't take you for the naïve kind."

They sat there in tense silence for a minute or two. The waitress brought by a plate of chicken and waffles and filled up Dar Adal's coffee meanwhile.

'Thank you, Doris," he said to her.

When she was out of earshot, Peter started again, lowering his head, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I need you to explain to me how the _fuck_ the world's most wanted man, not to mention a known terrorist, managed to escape from America. Even taking into account that he was presumed dead."

Dar Adal placed his fork on the side of his plate and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. He smiled.

"Don't you remember? You failed to kill him."

Peter lifted his head and sat up straight. Underneath the table he clutched his knee so hard he could feel the bruise forming beneath his grasp.

"So what are you saying? That he set the car bomb off and then released that video and then hopped a boat to the Arctic?"

"It's a little messy. But no matter."

"It doesn't make sense."

Dar Adal resumed eating, and in between bites said, "It doesn't matter."

A pause. Then, "He needs to be eliminated."

Peter bit the inside of his mouth and took a deep breath. He knew what was coming.

"So you can hop a boat to the Arctic and do it yourself."

"You want me to… kill him?" he said, barely above a whisper, his voice strained and his speech slow and measured.

"Yes."

"What if I say no?" He was testing the waters, testing himself, the guy who killed bad guys. He thought about that morning in the woods, Brody lifting his hands up to the sky in silent prayer. He had him at the center of his target, right at the center. His finger had been on the trigger. But he had balked.

_Killing Brody would kill her_. That's what he'd said to Estes before it all went to shit. He would not admit it but it was the reason he'd silently walked away that morning, back to his sleeping bag and empty tuna cans.

_What if I say no_, he thought to himself, working it out in his head. _What I walked away right now, declined the mission, declined to be that man? What if I did? And then I could tell her, who I really was. There would be no secrets anymore. It would just be easier. She could accept it. She had accepted a lot worse. _

"You won't," he replied, narrowing his eyes and sipping on his coffee.

Peter's face dropped because he knew it was the truth.

"Get your shit in order. You leave on Friday."

"That's in three days."

"So?"

"So…" he struggled to find the right words. _So my girlfriend, who also, as it happens, used to fuck Brody, might start to wonder if I just disappeared for a few days_. "So… what else do I need to know?" Peter said, swallowing hard.

"I'll meet you tomorrow and give you the details. Usual place and time." He folded his paper napkin and placed it in front of him before standing up. He reached in his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill, tucking it under the half-empty coffee mug.

"Cheer up," he said, patting Peter on the back. He was still silent, motionless in the booth. "Not everyone gets a second chance."

He placed his wallet back in his pocket, put on his cap, and walked out the door, the bell at the top ringing sweetly as he exited.

MORNING ONE-SEVENTEEN

The chorus of _one-seventeen_ was still humming in her head later that morning as she sipped on her third cup of coffee and typed furiously away at her computer, buzzed from the caffeine.

She had gone to her office, which she rarely used (except for that one time with Peter…), in order to get away from everyone. She hadn't expected to feel compelled to work, but here she was, clicking away at her computer, scrolling through reports, taking a sip of coffee every few minutes.

She looked up sharply when she heard a knock at the door and saw Saul's grey head of hair through the slits of the blinds on the window.

He opened the door and walked in as she shut her laptop.

"You have a minute?" he asked her.

"Sure. A minute."

He sat down easily in the chair in front of her desk and crossed one leg over the other.

"I've noticed you and Peter Quinn getting a little…"

She narrowed her eyes at him, shifted in her chair.

"…close," he finished.

"What do you mean?" She all of a sudden felt annoyed, which was surprising because she hadn't felt anything toward Saul in weeks. They'd existed separately and apart, passing in the halls like two planets out of the other's orbit but for one brief second when the other came in sight.

"I mean, I've noticed that you've become close. You're friends."

She swallowed. "Yeah, friends. What's this about, Saul?" She wanted to sound detached and nonchalant but she heard her tone and it was pleading and defensive.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea."

"Of course you don't."

"Carrie," he began softly.

"Look, I've heard this speech before, Saul, so spare me," she interrupted. "That should never have happened, are you getting too close, all your lines. I've heard them before." Her voice was dripping with contempt. She clenched her jaw and tightened her lips together to keep from crying, the anger rising up in her like bile.

"This is different."

"Is it?"

"I know you're angry with me. I know you're mad about Brody."

"Don't talk to me about Brody," she said, shaking her head slowly, her voice low but forceful.

Saul swallowed and uncrossed his legs. He sat up straighter in his seat, almost as if he was conveying the importance of what he was about to say.

"You don't want to hear this. You never want to hear this."

Carrie exhaled a little, defiantly, and bit her lip.

"That's because I'm tired of you treating me like I'm a little girl. Like I'm your daughter. Like I can't take care of myself. I don't need you to watch out for me. Not anymore." She stood up and grabbed her bag from the back of her chair, prepared to leave Saul sitting there.

Saul stood up, too, grasping the desperation of the situation. "You remember when Quinn first came on the operation and you told Virgil to look into him? Because you'd never heard of him?" he said, his voice louder, too, quick and anxious.

She stopped and turned toward him. "Yes. I remember."

"Didn't you ever wonder what they found?"

"They didn't find anything, so no."

"At first, nothing." Saul began gesturing with his hands. He paused and stuck them on his hips and waited for her to prompt him.

But she stood there silently, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Right about the time that Brody was taken away in that helicopter, Virgil and Max came to me. Turns out Peter Quinn lives like a fucking hermit, in a one room apartment with a rifle cleaning kit at the ready and a picture of the mother of his child holding his newborn baby." He spewed it all out in one breath with a measure of disdain Carrie had rarely heard from him.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" she said, shaking her head.

"His name's not even Peter Quinn. It's John. He works for Dar Adal. Estes brought him on to run things."

"What?" It was all she could think of to say to something that was so preposterous it seemed to double back and suddenly become plausible.

"I went up to Philadelphia to meet her, the woman. She's a police officer. They've got a little boy together…. His name's not even Peter Quinn."

"Why did Estes bring him in?" she said, almost as if she was thinking out loud, because she wasn't even looking at Saul when she said it, she was staring out the window, hands in her pockets.

At this Saul paused. He took a deep breath. "To kill Brody."

Carrie jutted her head back to him when he said it. _To kill Brody_. She narrowed her gaze at him, forcing her mouth shut.

"There was no deal, Carrie. Estes was planning to take him out once we got Nazir. Where do you think I was those last few days? Where did you think I was?"

Carrie brought her hand up to her forehead and ran her fingers through her hair.

"I…"

"He's working for Dar Adal." Carrie walked over to the empty chair in front of her desk, next to Saul, and sat down slowly. She looked up at him.

"I…"

She couldn't even find the words. All of a sudden her mind seemed to consist of nothing but air. She opened her mouth again, maybe to speak, maybe to breathe, to exhale, but the air just settled in and sank.

Saul touched her hand and pulled up the other seat beside her and sat.

Many minutes passed while both occasionally opened and closed their mouths in an attempt to form syllables and words and something, but it was quiet. Very quiet.

"They were going to kill him?" Carrie finally said, looking to Saul like a lost child.

"Yes."

"Why, why didn't they?"

Saul pursed his lips and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I don't know," he said softly, shaking his head slightly.

Carrie bit her bottom lip, moving her hands from the arm rest to her lap, out of Saul's touch. She stood up suddenly and pushed her hair behind her ears.

"I, I have to go," she said. She could feel the air in her office closing in around her, suffocating her. She could feel a lump forming in her throat and those three cups of coffee sloshing around in her stomach, burning her insides.

She glanced at Saul, who was looking up at her quizzically. Perhaps he had expected her to break down and start crying. Or to swear violently. She wasn't giving him that, though.

She started for the door and Saul lowered his head. "Carrie," he said as she opened the door.

She paused, her hand on the knob, and turned around to him, flexing her jaw. "I have to go."

Saul sat there and removed his eyeglasses. He rubbed his eye wearily as he heard the distinct thud of her forceful march grow fainter.

NIGHT ONE-SEVENTEEN

Carrie was sitting on the couch, her legs curled up under her, a glass of red wine in her hand, when she heard the door open. Then the shuffling of his feet on the hardwood floor, the clang of his keys dropping onto the table, the low thump as he dropped his bag next to the stairs. It was a familiar orchestra and one she'd grown used to. She took another sip of her wine and rested her chin against her clumped-up fist.

A second later he came into view, following the light the lone lamp had cast in the otherwise dark room.

"There you are," he said. She lifted her eyes up at him, and brought her hand down to rest on the arm of the sofa. She straightened her lips out at him in a weak, close-mouthed smile.

"What's the matter?" he said, turning his head to the side, eyeing her busily.

"I talked to Saul today," she whispered. She took a final sip of wine and set the glass down on the table in front of her.

"Yeah?" Peter said, following the trajectory of her empty glass from her hand to the table with his eyes and resting his stare there. "What about?"

"You, actually," she said. Her voice was husky and a little sweet, almost syrupy.

"Oh?" He was completely relaxed, almost absent-minded. His gaze was still fixed on her empty wine glass. He began unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt when she rose suddenly and walked past him. He turned as he fiddled with his left sleeve.

"That's it?" he called to her, laughing faintly to himself. She didn't turn around and made her way up the stairs. He sighed as he rolled the sleeve up and started on the right one.

"Carrie," he called again, following her upstairs. "Carrie."

He reached the top stair and turned to the bedroom, where Carrie was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, one hand draped across her body, holding her bicep. She looked casual in jeans and the oversize t-shirt she often wore to bed. Her feet were bare. He could see the eggplant color she'd painted on her toes last week.

He stopped when he saw her. She was staring at him and her jaw was jutted outward. One fist was clenched at her side.

"Carrie, where were you today?" he asked, deflecting the attention back to her. "Is everything okay with you?" He was concerned.

She inhaled deeply. "What's your real name?" She swallowed after she said it, and stood up straight, like she'd just done something really terrible.

"What?" he said. He stepped toward her and she remained fixed there, underneath the door frame.

"It's not Peter Quinn, is it?"

"What are you talking about? What did Saul tell you?"

"You need to leave," she said softly, her voice beginning to quiver.

"Carrie," he started in that straight, pleading tone of his that seemed to say, _You're acting like a fucking psycho_.

She began to shake her head and grabbed at her stomach. She squeezed her fingers together.

"Oh my God," she said. He still hadn't answered.

"Carrie, what did Saul tell you?" With each word he moved one step closer to her until he was standing just a foot away. She looked up at him weakly and he reached out and grazed her fingers. She pulled them away.

"Don't touch me." He pulled his hand back. One sleeve of his shirt was still uncuffed but hanging loosely from his arm.

"What did he tell you?"

She swallowed and looked up at him, matching her stare with his. "He said you work for Dar Adal. That Estes brought you in." She paused. "To kill Brody," she delivered finally.

Peter stood there fixed, his jaw tightening as she said it. Finally he said, "Yes." He said it slowly, his mouth moving but the rest of his body staying completely rigid.

She closed her eyes at this. In some small but vital corner of her mind she hadn't really believed it, not yet anyway. Now that was gone and erased, burned up. "I…" She lowered her eyes to the floor, no longer able to look at him.

"It was my job, Carrie."

At this her head shot up and the anger returned. "Did he tell you to fuck me, too?"

"Carrie," he said, his voice dropping, the twinge of hurt bleeding through just barely.

"I knew, I knew there was something. Why are you even still here?"

"Don't you even want to know why I didn't go through with it?"

"No." She shook her head and shut her mouth tightly.

"I knew it would kill you. I knew it would wreck you."

"Leave. You need to leave. I… I can't…" She kept shaking her head back and forth, as if it would will him to walk away, as if it would convince him.

"I'm not leaving."

"Get _out_, Peter." She didn't even care that it wasn't his name.

"No."

She sighed heavily, the frustration blossoming in her gut. He reached a hand out to her and grazed her shirt. She swatted him away. "You are a _liar_, and I don't want you in my house. Get. Out."

"_I'm_ a liar?"

As he started speaking, she turned away, about to begin pacing, when he grabbed her arm and held on tight. "You wanna tell me how you got Brody out of the country? How'd you float that?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I know he's alive."

"Don't talk to me about Brody."

"You fucking let a terrorist leave the country. He knew it. He knew he could play you and you'd do whatever the fuck he wanted because you were too fucking blinded to know any better. And now two hundred people are dead because of it."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," she whispered maliciously.

His hand was still on her arm and she moved to unclench his grasp but he pulled it toward him.

"Admit it."

"There's nothing to admit. Except that I was an idiot to believe that this was anything other than mindless _fucking_." She annunciated each word clearly, and they seared into his chest as she looked up at him, her eyes indignant and defiant.

He narrowed his eyes and looked into hers. And then in one swift motion he stepped toward her and kissed her, backing her into the dresser. It thudded against the wall and the ring in the glass dish rattled from the force.

She exhaled as he grabbed the back of her neck and tugged on her hair. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him toward her and then pushed away just as swiftly.

"Get out, Peter."

He stared at her angrily. "I know you want it."

She inhaled and exhaled quickly twice and he lowered his head again to kiss her. She pulled hard at his shirt and lifted it up and over his head. He snaked his own hand up her shirt and slid his fingers around her stomach. She dug her fingernails into the arch of his back and he pressed her harder against the dresser.

She moved her hand down his abdomen and started on his belt buckle and pants as he did the same, unbuttoning her jeans and sliding them down her legs. She got the buckle loose and reached her hand down and grabbed him.

He twitched, bit her lip, and she felt a surge of pleasure at this. With that he took hold of her waist and lifted her onto the dresser, the glass dish nearly sliding off the surface.

She took his head in her hands and kissed him, a tenderness and rage blending together as she tried to make it hurt. But a second later she stirred as he entered her and her fingers grew weak. She bit her lip; it was all she could do not to gasp.

She thumped against the dresser as he gripped her thigh. It hurt but she didn't care. In fact it also seemed to double back again like a boomerang and transform into something like pleasure.

He looked up at her, her eyes off into space, staring at the blinking clock on the nightstand. She could feel him staring at her and she looked at him, the light from the hallway casting a triangle of light on the corner of his ear but the rest shrouded in darkness. Still she could see his cold eyes, almost glowing they were so light, and as he thrust into her and she buckled under the weight of this pleasure, she realized they were the same.

Liars and cheats.

She came first, silent but for a soft cry, the pangs of her orgasm extending outward from her hips and up to her neck, tingling. She pressed her fingers onto his back, imagining the thin bruise she'd leave there, and he came a moment later, letting out a breathy exhale.

Her hair was slightly disheveled and he reached a hand out to smooth it but she turned away, sliding off the dresser. She picked up her panties and put them on silently.

Peter pulled his briefs back on and stood there looking at her expectantly. Her eyes lasered in on that scar on his stomach. She bent down and picked up his shirt.

"Now you can leave," she said, swallowing, handing him the shirt and walking past him into the bathroom. She shut the door behind her and locked it with one hand. She stood there in complete blackness, back against the door, one hand on the knob. She heard the clang of metal as he fastened his belt again, the soft steps his feet made against the carpeted floor, and a moment later the ever so faint din of crickets outside as he opened the front door and reentered the darkness.


	16. Chapter 16

NIGHT ONE-SEVENTEEN

Carrie stood in the bathroom, cloaked in total darkness, long after she heard the door shut behind Peter. One hand still firmly gripped against the knob, perhaps to keep her standing, because her knees felt like they might give way any second, and one clutching her stomach, feeling the air expand and contract in her body, physical proof that she was still breathing, she was.

She could feel her brain buzzing and spinning, a heat rising from her lungs. She focused on smooth and steady breaths, in and out.

An indefinite amount of time passed before she deemed it safe to open the door. To reenter the light and exit the black. She twisted the knob and it was like looking at an old photograph, seeing the snapshot of some previous life, some far off day frozen in time and made manifest on a piece of glossy paper. What an ordinary-looking photograph, she thought, as she stepped out into her bedroom. The bed, with sheets bunched up at the ends and the duvet cover twisted from sleep. The rhombus of yellow light forming at the doorway, sneaking in from the hallway. On the floor, her worn jeans collapsed, like a second skin molted and left for dead. The top dresser drawer, slightly opened, like someone had been in a rush and forgotten to close it. It was all so ordinary looking.

She walked downstairs and made sure the front door was locked before returning to her bedroom. She shut off all the lights and the blackness returned, but it was the good kind, the kind that rested her eyes and made her drowsy. She brushed her teeth, staring for five whole minutes at the blue toothbrush head, unsure what to do with it, but leaving it a wide berth anyway. Then she climbed into bed and took in his smell, still lingering over the sheets like perfume.

She debated whether or not to strip the bed right then and change the sheets, or to go downstairs and just sleep on the couch. But she fell asleep before she could make up her mind and didn't wake for twelve hours.

. . . .

Carrie was halfway to the lake, drumming her fingers to Thelonious Monk, before she even thought to call Saul. He'd probably be worrying about her after she'd left abruptly yesterday. And who knew what Peter had told him.

She reached for her cellphone and called him. She said a silent prayer when it went straight to voicemail.

"Hi, it's me. Not feeling well today. Um, don't worry or anything. Probably a 24-hour thing. Anyway. Ok, bye."

It sounded bad and it sounded like a lie but she had just thought of something on the fly. She had never been a particularly skilled liar, even a hundred miles away and over the phone.

The truth was, she actually was feeling well. Surprisingly. Like the sleep had rejuvenated her heart and her head and she felt a vitality that hadn't been there in many months. Not since, coincidentally, the last time she'd been to the lake with Brody, their final sojourn.

She had felt something bright and intense in her chest then, something born from the possibilities that hope brings. She had allowed herself to imagine life with Brody, normal life, and it excited her. To be able to wake up everyday next to him, and come home everyday to him, and feel his arms around her as she slept. She couldn't describe it; it felt like something impossibly perfect, made her nervous just at the thought of it.

"We could be happy, couldn't we?" he had said to her.

"Imagine that."

It was all she could do. It was something so imaginary, so dream-like. How could this have happened? Brody was still married. And he had ruined her life once before—she thought the only reason she'd been able to forgive him is because she'd picked up the pieces herself.

And now, four months later, Carrie was in just as much a state of limbo. She had had to choose between him and the job before (she hated that the decision was so black and white, hated it from the depths of her gut). She still felt like she was choosing, as much as she wanted to put him away, as much as she wanted to be the strong and independent woman she thought herself to be. These days she felt weak and guilty and trapped in a permanent state of indecision. She lived her life from one day to the next, but that didn't feel freeing. It felt suffocating, always counting, always with that clock. It had descended onto her brain and refused to loosen its grip. She felt sick all the time, like any moment she might break, like she might be losing it. Not even rigorously and obsessively adhering to her meds regimen could comfort her.

She wanted so desperately to be sure again. To be sure of what was true and what was not. Brody: too good to be true, mysteriously and in ways that didn't make sense to her. Something lost in the silence and out in the woods and she would never see him again. Nazir: called her bluff and won the battle. Saul: fading away. Peter: fuck him.

How many times had the rug slipped out from under her, sending her into a free fall? How many times had she been made to look a fool? That was where that sickness came from, that was where it thrived.

And so it was odd that today of all days, knocked down once again, she woke up feeling the weight of that sickness removed and it was like she could move again. She packed an overnight bag and drank three glasses of water and just started driving. She didn't even realize where she was going until an hour into the trip. It was like there was a magnet inside of her pulling her there, to the cabin. It was like her mind telling her subconsciously to just _go_.

She had picked up an expensive bottle of wine at a liquor store a few miles west of the cabin. She rationalized the purchase by telling herself that its superior quality would make her savor it and not finish the whole thing in one night.

It was late October and the leaves were really beginning to turn now, too, fiery orange and glowing red, a brilliant canopy on top of the black asphalt. As she drove closer to the cabin, she could feel the air changing, too. Gone was the sterilized greyness from Langley and that awful burnt smell that still lingered, still made her feel nauseous, though she should have become used to it. Instead it was something mossy and rich. Everything was brighter, everything was crisper, everything was in a sharper focus.

She pulled up the driveway to the cabin and couldn't help but smile. A strange, small smile, the usual straightness of her lips turning up so slightly only she would have noticed. This cabin still held a lot of memories for her. From her childhood and, of course, from Brody. Even though their first trip there had ended horribly, often it was like she had blocked out all of that awfulness and what remained was simple and good: the firelight, and seeing his scars, kissing him for the first time without the cloak of alcohol, waking up to his warmth.

But how quickly her smile faded when she saw them there. She froze, her hand gripping the steering wheel tightly and her knuckles growing white, her face draining of color, too. Eventually she put the car in park and got out, walking up to the porch uneasily, that sickness returning. She thought she might become actually sick right then. She approached them warily, hovering over them, examining them disconcertedly.

She swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry and itchy. She felt so, so sick. She sat down on the porch steps, sitting up straight and tall, her knees bent at a perfect right angle.

She took a deep breath and picked them up.

There was a stack of them.

A whole stack.

A stack of letters.

Sealed in yellow envelopes.

She flipped through each one. They were all addressed to "C. Mathison." It had been written out on a typewriter, she guessed, because the ink was smudged and on the second one an 'h' had been typed over a square of white.

Her breathing quickened.

A whole stack. She counted: nine in all.

The first one was dated three months ago. It was worn and flattened. A drop of rain had formed a ring around a few of the letters and the ink had rippled out like a pool of water after a rock breaks the surface. It had dried and wrinkled. She placed a finger over it and felt the roughness.

She opened the first letter carefully, as if she was handling an antique, afraid the slightest mishandling would render it broken forever. It was postmarked July 17 from Nova Scotia. She pulled out a folded piece of off-white paper and began to read.

_I can't believe how cold it is here, even in summer. Sometimes I do miss the desert. I hope you know how much I love you. _

She turned the paper over. It was the front side of a flyer, advertising a community cooking class. That was it. Three sentences. Her immediate rage at him sending her a letter with his location at a specific date subsided and all of a sudden she felt overwhelmed by the connection and solace these three measly sentences had brought her.

She read it over again, hanging on every word. _Cold. Summer. Sometimes. Hope._

She folded it carefully and placed it back in the envelope and opened the next one. It was dated almost a month later from Iceland.

_I'm leaving Canada. I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm apologizing, but I feel sorry for it. I know that wasn't a part of your plan. So I'm sorry. _

_I'm on a shipping boat to Iceland now. I am working in the kitchens. I've never seen so many shipping containers before. Dozens and dozens of them, stacked so high. _

_I miss you. _

_I don't know what happens after this. But I couldn't stay there for very long. I was very tired. I don't have a plan and I wish I could talk to you because you always had a plan. You always have a plan. You're so much smarter than me. _

_I love you. _

She inhaled deeply and her chin began to shake as she thought of him working on that shipping boat, adrift and lost.

She opened the third one. It was dated ten days later from Iceland.

_I am in Olafsvik. I hope I spelled that right. :)_

_I am fishing right now. Working on cutting fish. It's a smelly job. I grew a beard. I think that makes me fit in more with them. _

_I think about you all the time. I wonder what you're doing. I wonder how you are. I hope you are okay. I hope you are well. I think about you so much. Did you remember that you left your passport with me? So I still have a picture of you to look at. I look at it every night. I've memorized that picture. _

_I hope you get these letters and know that I am fine. I don't want you to worry about me, but I know that you will. You don't have to. I don't want you to spend the rest of your life worrying about me. If I could wish for anything, it would be for you to stop worrying about me. I know you are. I will be fine. You will be fine. _

She read it over again.

_I will be fine, you will be fine._

How could he be so sure? How could he be so sure? So many miles away and he still had to extend a calming hand to her cheek to tell her it would all be okay.

The fourth one was dated a week later_. _

_I am on a boat now to Norway. I do not like to stay in one place for very long. I feel restless. It rained so hard yesterday. All I could think about was that time in the rain outside the church. That seems like years and years ago but it wasn't. _

_Hope you are well. I love you. _

So it hadn't been Sweden but Norway. She'd never been there before. She thought about Brody in that vivid greenness, farming or fishing, looking like a grizzly bear. She smiled and moved on to the fifth letter.

_Everyday I pray to God that you are happy. I pray that Dana and Chris and Jessica are happy, too. I know that must be strange for you to read, maybe I shouldn't mention them to you. I never before thought about the burden you must have borne from that. I never wanted you to feel like that. I don't think I realized how hard that must have been for you. Or for them either. I hate myself sometimes for being so blind to it. But I get a lot of time to think here, all by myself. I don't think I've spoken a word to another soul in weeks. _

_So I am very lonely, but I relive every moment I ever had with you (even the sad ones) and with my family and it's not as bad. I think about everything. I think about the first time I saw you. You smiled at me so sly. You probably don't remember, but I do. _

_Do you remember when you provoked that white supremacist at the bar that day? Oh God, I hope you remember! I think a lot about that weekend at the cabin. For so long I tried not to think about it at all, but I think about it a lot now. I miss you, more than you'll ever know. _

She read it over three times, savoring each word, each phrase. If she focused very hard she could imagine him sitting next to her, one hand stroking her hair as she burrowed into the crook of his shoulder, reading his words aloud to her. She could hear the huskiness, the cadences of his voice, the low and soothing murmur from his lips.

The sixth one was postmarked three days later.

_I had a dream about you. I just woke up and had to write it all down so I wouldn't forget. I want to remember everything about you so I won't forget. Anyway, we lived in Baltimore and we had a dog. I think it was a chocolate lab, but I'm not sure. Anyway his name was Charlie. I think you named him. _

_So we had a dog and we lived in this townhouse in the city and it's winter I think. We stayed in and watched old movies all night and I cooked dinner for us and you made dessert and we just stayed up all night watching movies. You kept getting angry at me for asking questions during the middle. Then we made love and I swear it was like you were really here with me. _

_Boring, I know. Too boring for a dream maybe._

The seventh one was dated one month ago.

_It's so cold here. I thought I knew what cold felt like. I didn't until now. _

_I can't believe it's been three months since I've seen you. It feels like so much longer. The days here are shorter but they do pass by so slow. Being by yourself just makes the time pass by slower, I think. _

_But you know it's really very beautiful here. It's so green and open and you can actually see the stars at night. Like something out of a postcard maybe. I would take you here if I could. And the water, it's so clear you can see right down to the bottom. The mountains reflect right off the surface. I swear it's like something in a movie. _

_I think you would like me with a beard. _

She laughed at the last line. _I think you would like me with a beard_. Even thousands of miles away he could make her laugh. She folded the letter up and opened the eighth one. There was only one left after this. The postmark was October 10.

_If you are worrying about me still, I want you to stop. I want you to move on and I want you to be happy and not feel guilty for doing it. Please. _

_I lived for eight years in isolation and captivity. This is not much different. So don't feel sorry for me. It is not your obligation to save me, or to clear my name, or to do any of it. I have accepted that, but you are stubborn, so it will probably take time. _

_Remember what I told you on that fire road? I think about it everyday. I told you that this was love and you said it wasn't goodbye. I never stop thinking about that. _

_Maybe you weren't ready to say goodbye then. _

_I will not love you any less if you say goodbye. It won't lessen what we had or what you felt or what I feel. I worry that you have made yourself sick fighting for me. You saved me too many times already. I don't think I ever thanked you, but I am thanking you now, because I would not be here without you. I'm not trying to be a martyr. But I can't run for much longer. _

_Just know that nothing that has happened before or since can change that. One day I know you will meet someone who makes you happier than I ever made you and who loves you in ways that I could not, and you will love him. I know this, because you are you. One day you will find someone and I hope that you will be able to love him. If I could ask you for one thing it would be that. Do not hang on this forever. Maybe you will always love me, and that's okay. I will always love you. But do not be afraid to love someone else. I am not a martyr, but please don't be afraid. _

_I miss you and I love you. _

Tears began to spill from the corners of her eye. They dropped onto the pages and blurred the ink. She tucked her hair behind her ears and bit her lip and wiped her eyes. She read the letter over again and ached for him. She ached for him so much her hands became numb.

There was only one letter left. It was postmarked October 16. She wondered when it had arrived and whether there would be any after it. She ran a finger over the print on the envelope, felt the texture of the letters and traced their contours. She imagined him typing it away at some empty desk, illuminated yellow by a warm hearth.

_It's snowing. Snowing! Guess winter arrives early and stays because it's so damn cold I can hardly feel my fingers as I type this. Every few days I must go into town to buy some food and other things. Anyway, I walked into the market yesterday and I was the only one in there except for this old couple. A man and a woman, must have been close to 70 years old, both of them. The man was tall and the woman shorter. She was putting potatoes into a sack. I saw them out of the corner of my eye (I had a large hat on so couldn't see much, plus I tend to just keep to myself anyway you know). All of a sudden they started bickering over something. I don't know what they were talking about, of course, but she was really getting at him. He just stood there and nodded along and tried to get a word in edgewise but she wasn't having any of it. Finally he said one word and she just froze, stopped talking right then. He reached his head out and kissed her cheek, and she looked at him funny then turned and walked away. He picked up the sack from the barrel of potatoes and followed her then. _

_I think he noticed that I was looking at him because he turned around and looked at me and sort of turned up his hands at me and smiled like, what can you do? _

_I don't know why, but I thought of you right then. It was like you were right there with me and I even felt something nip at my jacket because I turned around and I could even hear you whisper something in my ear. I wish I remembered what it was, but it was like you were right there with me. _

_I think in another time that could have been us. So maybe I'll see you soon. _


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: I don't want to oversell this, but I was in tears writing this, so... yeah..._

* * *

October 29, 2012

Brody,

I found your letters. Maybe "found" isn't the right word because it's not exactly like you were hiding them from me. You are smarter than you think.

So I found them. I got them. I read them. I read them all right then, sitting on the porch. I could hear your voice saying each word, I could see your smile and your frown and even your eyes, right there on the page.

I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you are okay right now, that you are safe. I'm sorry, but I have been worrying. Don't be too upset.

I actually knew, though. I knew that you had left Canada. I told Saul. I had to tell him. He is my closest friend and I told him. I told him everything. He never told anyone else but he knew, too, that you had left. They tracked you to Northern Europe. They thought it meant that you were really guilty, but I knew in my heart that it was because you were afraid.

Did you know that it's been 118 days since we've seen each other? 118. I can't stop counting the days. Each day I wake up and the page has flipped and it's a new day but it's one more that I'm apart from you and I can hardly stand it.

I can't stand not seeing you everyday, not being near you, not being able to touch you or hold you or talk to you.

So those letters… they were like really talking to you. Did you ever play telephone as a kid? We had a tree house in our backyard and Maggie would stand in the tree house and I'd poke my head out the window of our bedroom and we'd each have one hand held to the end of a plastic cup with a long white string connecting them. I'd say something to test them out and then wait for her from the window and then a moment later she'd give a thumbs up.

It was like you were speaking into that long string and I just had to wait to hear it.

I don't know what to do now. I miss you so much my body aches. I know I said I would clear your name and that I would help you and get you out of this. But I couldn't. I don't think I tried hard enough. I filled pages and pages of notebooks with colors and numbers and letters and phrases. Dozens and dozens of pages. I don't even know. Then I just stopped. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I stopped. It's not fair to you. I feel like I gave up on you, or maybe on myself. I'm sorry. I feel so guilty about that.

I promised you it would all be over soon. Do you remember? In your house that day after Dana had run away? You were so scared but I kept pushing you. I'm sorry. There is so much I would change if I could. There is so much I would do over if I could go back.

I just don't know what to do. You say it doesn't matter, that you want me to move on. But I don't think I know how. I don't think I know how to let you go. You seem to have all the answers, so how do I do this? You said that I always had a plan but I feel so lost right now. I have no plan. How do I do this?

I'm afraid that I'll never see you. I'm afraid that you'll die and I won't know when or where and that you'll be in pain before you go. I'm afraid for what I'll do when I find out. I'm afraid we'll never find out how this happened or who did this to you and everyone will think you were a monster and it won't be enough that I know the truth. I'm afraid I'll never be able to stop thinking about you, or how many days it's been since I've seen you, and I'm afraid it will drive me crazy. I'm afraid that since you'll never see this, never read these words, that you'll never know how much I love you. I'm afraid I'll be alone forever, just wishing for you, years from now. I'm afraid for you, too. Maybe you've accepted this. But I'm still so afraid for you.

I think about you a lot also. Before I wondered where you were and what you were doing and now that I know I can't stop thinking about it. I think about what you've seen and whether you have enough money. Stupid things, I know, but I think about every little thing. I think about Dana and Chris and Jess sometimes, too. I think that's okay. I think that's natural. That's what I tell myself, because I think about how they're getting on without you.

I started running. This is probably very surprising to you because you know I'm not that into physical exercise. I hated it at first, but I kept it up because it made me feel closer to you because I know you are a runner. I go running really early in the morning, when it's still kind of blue outside from the night, and I just run for miles because I can feel you running next to me. I guess that gives me peace, but I can't run forever.

I hope I get another letter from you. I hope that wasn't the last one. I will keep reading them over and over, and they'll keep me close, but I hope that isn't the last one. I'm afraid it's the last one.

I think you are right, though. In another time, another life, maybe, that will be us. Do you believe in reincarnation? I never did before but maybe we all come back as something else, as someone else, and we get a chance to do it over. I think about this sometimes, about what happens when you die. I don't believe in God like you do, so I'm afraid of that, too. Maybe if I did I would be stronger and more at peace and more accepting like you. But maybe we will come back as two different people. And we'll cross paths one day and recognize the other but not know from where. I will not be Carrie but I will be _me_. And you'll be _you_, but not Brody. Does that make sense? It does in my head, but just reading it now it sounds kind of crazy. We will come back and see each other and it will just be something magical and inexplicable. It will be like we've known each other for a whole lifetime. I guess that wouldn't be entirely untrue.

And then we can see each other everyday and go to sleep next to each other and wake up next to each other. Every single day forever. I can touch you and it will be more than just a phantom. And we can watch old movies all the time, all the good ones, over and over until you know them backwards and forwards and you don't have to ask questions. And we can go running in the morning and take walks every night after dinner. And you can teach me how to cook and I will help you perfect the art of ordering in. And we can come up here, to the cabin, by the water, we can live here. We will get a dog and name him together. And I will pick fights with you over the grocery list and you will kiss me and I'll forget what I was even talking about. And we will be so happy and talk late into the night about everything, about every little thing. It will be like we've known each other forever because we have. We will grow old together and one day we will finally figure out how, how we knew each other. We will both realize it at the same exact instant, that we have always loved each other, so maybe this, right now, is not the ending but just the beginning.

So I'll be looking for you. I'll be looking for you always. One day I'll find you.

Until then, all my love,

Carrie


	18. Chapter 18

DAY 119

She drove in silence back, back to home, away from him, away from the water. After a while she didn't hear any noise at all. Not the steady hum of her inhaling and exhaling, the whir of cars passing by, the click of her blinker. It became neutralized, crossed out, like she had entered a deep sleep, her mind shut off.

She placed the letter next to her in the passenger seat. Earlier she had folded it up carefully, going over the creases three times, and then found an empty envelope and sealed it. She didn't address it. She would never send it. She thought about someone finding it. After she died maybe, and people went through her personal effects. There was something unassuming about a blank white envelope but also something too enticing. It held the promise of something grandiose, life-altering, the final solution to a consuming mystery.

She would never send it. She would never read it again. She would keep it sealed forever, probably place it in a shoebox in her closet, picking it up occasionally and tracing the corners until they became rounded from her touch.

But she would keep it forever. In this lifetime, no one else would ever read those words.

The bottle of red wine sat next to her also, it, too, unsealed, never opened. Carrie had fallen asleep on the couch with those letters by her side, still opened before her. She'd fooled herself into thinking Brody's scent still lingered on that couch. It didn't, but his words, his smell, his likeness, they loomed over her.

Why had he sent these letters if he wanted her to forget? Why had he done that? She felt a perverse mixture of intense hatred and powerful love for him. It was a tease, because the letters made him real. Made him real again in her mind. He was not gone but an actual thing, an actual being, with thoughts and hopes and wishes and love for her. Not some abstract person she had dreamt up in her mind, crazily enough. But living and breathing. And yet so out of reach, so unattainable. There he was, so far away, half a world away, sending her these letters, these love letters, she thought. And yet she could not have him.

She hated him for it.

She called Saul from the road and told him she needed to speak with him urgently about something. Could he meet that afternoon? He said he could and was everything okay? Everything was fine, and she would see him soon.

She went first to her apartment. It felt changed to her when she stepped in, like the air had shifted, or the walls had been painted a different color. Had they always been blue? She remembered that the walls in Brody's home were painted blue, too, and that felt like some sick cosmic joke for a reason she couldn't articulate.

She went straight upstairs and into her closet, climbing to the back, under the coats and dresses and sweaters, and pulled out a black shoebox. She placed the white envelope beneath the tissue paper and paused. The moment felt final to her, like she was sending it away, the last chance to change her mind and open it. Or burn it. Or do something that would make it go away and stay there.

This—this placing it out of sight but not out of reach—felt, too, like a tease. And she hated Brody all over again. It felt like a trap, and every trap felt like his fault. Or her fault. She was so tired of blame and guilt.

If she wasn't preoccupied by the days now, by the counting, she'd be forever worried about the fucking letter, lying in the back of her closet, waiting for someone to come and find it. To come and open it. To blame her. But she couldn't send it. She would never send it.

When she arrived at Saul's office later that day, he was sitting in a chair by the window, the blinds halfway up, the early afternoon sun streaming in. She knocked on the door twice before opening it a crack.

"Hi there. Come in," he said, looking up from a stack of papers. "I'm so glad to see you. Are you okay?" He got up to greet her and for the first time in months he touched her. He embraced her.

She sunk into his hug, into his arms, and allowed his warmth to engulf her. She didn't know why, but his hands were always warm, and that comforted her.

"I was getting worried about you."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left like that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay…. So what's up?"

She sat down in the chair in front of his desk and he took a seat next to her, facing toward her, listening intently. She all of a sudden felt nervous, like she was giving a performance or making an important presentation.

"I…" She looked up at him and he smiled. She paused and smiled, too. "With your approval, I would like to go back to seeing Dr. Rosenberg."

"What?"

"I know we can't see people outside the agency, but I think it would be good for me…. To see him…. I think it would be good for me."

"Why now?"

"It's time."

"What's the matter?" he said after a long pause.

"I'm fine. I want to do this. I… think it would help me." She was choosing her words very carefully. "Just be more present, you know. Here…. And at home." She looked up at him and his eyes conveyed a sadness to her that made her feel guilty all over again. To look into his eyes, pools of sorrow and hurt for her, and she felt guilty for having caused it.

He reached out to her and took her trembling hand in his two sturdy ones. "Of course," he whispered softly.

She exhaled and smiled, and brought a hand up to her cheek instinctively. She hadn't even realized she'd started crying as she felt the wetness of her tears stain her fingers. "I feel like such a mess."

"We all do."

She tried laughing but it came out stifled, pained almost, and she was embarrassed.

"Look, why don't you take the rest of the week off? Come back Monday when you're feeling more… refreshed," he said with a smile, a slight upturn in his voice.

Ordinarily she would have balked at this—alone time, with nothing else to distract her—but this felt like an act of mercy and she felt no shame at obliging. She nodded and stood up.

Then she hugged him and he kissed her cheek and she felt a piece of her, some nondescript but painfully absent part, come back, like something she had found. Like something she'd placed in a shoebox for safekeeping, or perhaps absentmindedly, and thought she'd lost forever.

She pulled away and turned to leave but a moment later, her hand on the doorknob, so close to not knowing, so close to that sweet ignorance, she caught herself. "Have you seen Peter?"

She didn't know why she was asking, she didn't know why she wanted to know, she didn't know if she even cared.

"I… I thought he would have told you."

"Told me what?"

"He's been reassigned. Or… he's not working at Langley anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"That's it. He told me yesterday. Did he say something to you?"

"No," she said softly.

"Oh…" Saul said.

"I'll see you Monday," Carrie said. She smiled a close-lipped smile and left. She nodded at Saul's secretary on her way out, opening her bag to look for something, what she wasn't sure. She felt like she should be looking for something. She walked like this, her head craned down, fingers fumbling through her purse, all the way through the hallways. She didn't look up; she knew where she was going.

No one paid her any mind. No one looked up from their computers to see Carrie Mathison—so usually put together in pantsuit, her hair long and sleek, her pearl earrings gleaming, her four-inch heels making marks incredibly in the carpet—in jeans and a sweater, wearing Converse sneakers, her hair dull and lank, her eyes puffy and purple beneath her lashes, searching through her bag for her keys or maybe her ID. Maybe her cell phone.

The truth was she was looking for nothing. The truth was she was thinking as she walked through those cavernous hallways, past the droves of people studying paperwork and maps and diagrams, if that would be the last time she saw him, hearing his steps grow fainter and then disappear altogether, like a ghost, walking into the night, into the blackness, away, away.

If the last image she would have of him was his bare chest as she handed him his shirt, his hair tousled from where she had dragged her fingers through it. If the last feeling would still be the residual warmth from sex, from sex with him, of her orgasm, of feeling dirty for fucking him, of feeling powerful for making him leave. If the last touch would be his nail digging into the nape of her neck, his teeth on her lips, her skin stuck against his. If the last sound would be that moaning release, rising from her throat, something long and smooth and slowly fading.

She wondered if he had been in pain before he went.


	19. Chapter 19

I.

Sometimes, the sheer enormity of his solitary existence hit him square in the chest, so hard and so fast his body tightened up, and he could not breathe, he could not move.

Living, day-to-day, from here to there, it usually all made sense, it usually felt fine, okay, maybe good, not bad. He was used to it. That scared him. He couldn't lie and say it didn't. It was really fucking hard sometimes but he told himself he had a job to do and he was a man who finished the job.

Bullshit like that.

II.

"You know the drill, but I'm trying to avoid another colossal fuck up like last time." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded over white envelope. "It's all in there."

He reached out and took it, not bothering to open it up, for fear of seeming too interested. Too invested. Not robotic enough.

"And after?"

"Any personal shit. This guy's probably living like a monk so he won't have any computer or cell phone, but on the off chance, take 'em and leave. Do with him what you feel is best."

He swallowed, took a sip of his beer.

"…And then I'll let you know. But you won't be coming back to D.C. so tomorrow's your last chance to go see the Archives. Hear it's supposed to be sunny, too." Then he rose from his seat, put on his cap, and left.

When he knew he was gone, out of sight, he opened the envelope. One photo, one address, one name.

He thought he might be sick.

III.

_I'm coming over. _

_Should I bring wine? _

_Be there in 30._

_253 W. Roslyn St. _

_Tomorrow. _

_Haha. _

_Hmm… 6:30 maybe? Why? _

_Waited for you earlier but couldn't find you. See you tonight. _

He had to clear it, clear it all.

Then: two seconds later, done. Sometimes it was like ripping off a Band-Aid, and the anticipation of the pain was worse than the actual reality.

IV.

He sits silently, his hands folded neatly in front of him. He is reading a book. It's a biography of Nelson Mandela. He doesn't know why he's reading it. It's pretty good, very interesting.

He glances at his watch. He will be in Norway in two hours. Then travel by car to the Lofoten Islands. Then stake him out. Then kill him. Then leave.

Very simple really.

This time, she is not here. This time, he will not be praying. This time, he will know he is doing the right thing. This time, he would maybe like her to feel horrible and sick and nauseous and have a real reason for hating him.

V.

He was not an emotional guy. Not that expressive, not that forthcoming. When she laid in bed next to him, hands balled up in little fists brought up under her chin, eyes faced toward him, stomach to the sheets, and told him about her ECT, he felt guilty for not having anything kind to say back. He laid next to her, on his side, his head propped onto his hand.

"It was so fucking scary," she said, trying to smile, trying so hard, he could tell.

He couldn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

"But you just have to block it out. You go through with it… because you think you'll get out on the other side. Better for it. But you just have to wipe it away, erase it… Or else it… it just eats you up." Her eyes had started to wander, away from him, like she forgot he was still there, like she didn't know she was saying this to him, like she didn't know she was saying this at all.

"But you're better now," he said finally, smiling.

"Right." She blinked. She nodded. She looked up at him and smiled. "Right, I am better."

There was a twinkle in her eyes, then, something inexplicable and electrifying and he narrowed her eyes at her, his lips turning upward, a gleam in his eyes, too. He lowered his head and kissed her, and she smoothed his cheek with her hand.

She had dainty, rather delicate fingers, and when she touched him then it was like she was afraid to hurt him, afraid to break him.

When they made love, she was easily submissive, growing weak and faint with each passing moment. This surprised him, for he imagined her to be more aggressive, more forceful. In fact she surprised him in nearly every way.

She was at turns neat and a complete slob. Her closet was meticulously organized, everything in its proper place, nothing askew, nothing wrinkled. But her living room was horrible, littered with takeout food containers most days, papers often scattered around, and she could never find the remote.

She was an extremely careful driver, hardly ever breaking the speed limit, always using her turn signal, keeping a modest distance between all the cars around her. But she was impossibly relaxed when she drove, never more than three fingers on the steering wheel, always fiddling with the radio dial but never taking her eyes off the road.

She only showered in the mornings.

She never made the bed.

She was the type of person who fell asleep on the couch whenever she had the chance, her head in an awkward position. He would wake her up and tell her to come upstairs to bed and she'd deny she'd ever been sleeping. And then the next morning she would ask him why he let her sleep with her neck crooked to one side.

She actually did brush her teeth for two minutes every morning and night. Those electric toothbrushes had little timers built into them and she never strayed.

She was meticulous about her meds, but she still kept them hidden in a white aspirin bottle, even though he knew she took them.

She only drank water, coffee, and wine.

It was strange getting to know her as a person, as a woman, with thoughts and needs and desires and habits, after only ever imagining her as an intelligence officer, distant and possibly _off_, someone he liked working with and respected but didn't actually know. It was strange knowing her.

At turns, too, she would turn her affection for him off and on. Some mornings she would wake him up and they'd have sex right then and it would be passionate and heated and other mornings she wouldn't speak a word to him until he finally grew weary of the silence and said something.

He simultaneously found himself walking on eggshells around her—afraid to push the wrong button, say the wrong thing, do anything that would set her on edge—and being forceful enough to goad her, because at a certain point that he recognized but couldn't always anticipate, she doubled back and softened, or struck back, and the next moment their clothes were lying on the floor and she was sinking into him.

The change could be instantaneous, which often led him to believe she was skipping pills (even though he watched her take them every morning) or not eating right or not sleeping enough. He became obsessed with fostering a healthier life for her. He liked to cook her balanced meals, exercise with her regularly, make sure she got enough hours of sleep every night. He tried to make things normal for her. Sometimes he felt his strategies working, sometimes it was if she was in an impenetrable cocoon, a milky exterior blurring her from him—or him from her, he wasn't sure.

When she grazed her fingers over his cheek, she brought his head toward her lips and kissed his nose. She smiled a big-toothed grin and he brought himself to her, snaking a hand under her back and kissing her stomach, her breast. She writhed beneath him, digging her fingers into his shoulder.

He felt she needed something to hold onto.

VI.

Growing used to being alone is a sobering thing. It's humbling. It takes time, practice.

Eventually, gradually, it becomes something so normal, something so easy, and that is the most frightening thing of all. To speak a word to someone and realize it's the first you've spoken to a living soul in days, weeks even.

It is scary, to become confined to your existence, and your existence solely. To sustain yourself on nothing but your own thoughts.

It is scary, but it is also peaceful. Quiet. Blissful and euphoric, in many ways.

He thought he probably felt the same way, after so many years in isolation. He thought that this fearful peace might be universal.

He could not decide whether it was worse to be constantly afraid or better to be always at peace.

And so he could not decide if he was putting him out of his misery, or ending something truly perfect.

He could not decide if this was an act of mercy or an act of war.

VII.

He was not praying this time.

He had a scraggly beard, the kind people who lived in the Arctic had. He looked like a lumberjack. His beard was a dark shade of crimson and he was easily disguised by it.

It was not hard. It was surprisingly easy, quick, painless. Mostly painless.

His cottage was right beside a fairly dense forest, perfect for cover. The smoke emanating from the chimney signaled his presence.

He had only to wait in the snow, wait for him to come out for a single moment, and it was done, finished.

One moment he was living, breathing, an actual thing, a person, a man, a living and breathing man. The next moment he had a bullet in his brain and there were perfect circles of glowing red blood spotted across the snow. The next moment he was gone forever.

The rifle had a silencer and there was no one around for miles. He thought about the old adage, If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

It seemed crudely appropriate as he disposed of the body, ransacked the cottage, found an empty mug of tea, burned his clothes and everything that would leave a mark or print.

It was almost too easy.

Because there was an envelope, one of those golden yellow ones, sitting on a table by the door. It was long and rectangular. It was addressed to her.

He blinked, certain he was hallucinating. This was his guilty conscience making its presence known, fucking him over, making him see things that were not real. He rubbed his eyes and brought the envelope right under his nose and read it over again.

He thought he might be sick.

She would hear him. She would hear him falling. She would hear him falling swift and hard, onto the ground, the snow crunching beneath him. Why hadn't he realized she would hear, she would always be there to hear? The sound would be unbearable to her. It would make her go crazy, make her want to crawl out of her body if only to get away from the noise, the unbearable sound.

It would kill her probably.

He thought it would be easy because he would not be praying, because he deserved it, because he wouldn't be expecting it. He thought this time he would like to make her feel sick and horrible and have a real reason for hating him.

He could not decide if this was an act of mercy or an act of war.


End file.
